The Sleeping Casket
by S058
Summary: The SR-2 discovers a abandoned ship. The Ship's name: Forward Unto Dawn.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: I do not own ME2, thought I do own a copy of ME 2 Collector's Edition, nor do I own the Halo franchise. Bioware owns ME, and Bungie owns Halo, all rights except OC's belong to them. This contains violence, language, slight OOC, spoilers for both MEs and Halo 3, violence, pop culture references, violence, and more violence. I'm reuploading ch1 and 2, after making several useful edits, that I was inspired to do based on the reviews I've gotten.

Male Shep, Solider, Renegade

**Omega Station, ****Sahrabarik, Omega Nebula**

Former Lt. Commander Kurt Shepard was not in a good mood. He had just arrived at Omega to finally hunt down Samara's twisted daughter, when Yeoman Kelly told him that the Illusive Man once again wanted to talk to him. Though it was annoying to speak to him, he was a lot more civil than the Council ever was. He walked into the Comm room, and stepped onto the quantum entanglement equipment. The scanner engaged and scanned over his body, and making a digital copy of him right in front of the Illusive Man, and Sheppard took a good look at him. The Illusive Man's mood was, as usual impossible to discern.

He spoke, his usual nondescript voice sounding almost excited "Shepard, I hate to pull you away from your mission to stop the Collectors, but we've encountered an anomaly that I thought you might like to investigate. One of our survey ships was stopped to make a drive discharge, and made a shocking discovery. There's a derelict ship drifting out in the Grissom system, dating back at least 50,000 years. It could be Prothean, but we can't be certain. The vessel was forced to leave, as it was on a tight schedule to make a delivery to a cell. I want you to examine the vessel, and see what can be salvaged, and if it even is Prothean."

Shepard replied" I understand, but why so urgent? Surely a battered old hulk can wait a couple of days, can't it?"

The Illusive Man said" Not when I've detected a Collector vessel on an intercept path with the hulk. I estimate it will be there within 12 hours. That means you have 10 hours to get there, see what's salvage-worthy, salvage what can be salvaged, and destroy the wreckage before the Collectors can board it."

Shepard nodded, and turned and walked off the board, ending the transmission. He opened the Comm room's door, and walked out, and then he turned to the left and walked through the armory, cutting through there to enter the CIC. He approached the Galaxy map, and laid in a course for the Grissom System, where hopefully he would get some answers to the questions that were flowing through his head.

**2 Hours later, Grissom System, Forward Unto Dawn, Cryogenic chamber**

Cortana had been monitoring the Dawn's mangled sensor section for the past few years, and had seen nothing that would be of use. However, she had noticed when an unknown space vessel dropped in system, and immediately decided to thaw out John. She knew that if they had hostile intent, she needed someone who could actually fight, and plus she need to talk to him again, at least before she was forced to be shut down. Unfortunately, the cryo-tube was too short on power for a safe defrost, so she was just going to have to rig it for transfer, hopefully the newcomers had a source of power that could be used to bring him back.

She had finally come to the near end of her lifespan, and wanted to talk to him at least before she died. Reading the tube for transfer took a half-hour, during which time the unknown vessel came closer, and Cortana was able to examine it more closely.

It wasn't a big vessel, measuring about 200 meters long and equipped with 4 long engines that used an unknown energy source. She also noticed the odd energy readings from the ship's rear, but the readings suggested that the reactor was located there, or something that generated a lot of power. She was having some difficulty picking up the ship on sensors, but it was easily seen visually. The ship was equipped with shields that were similar to Covenant shielding technology, but seemed more powerful than the Covenant's shields. The ship seemed to be equipped with interesting weapons, but the primary weapon appeared to be a mass accelerator that fired a much smaller slug than the MAC guns the UNSC used.

The unknown vessel was now hanging in place off the rear of the ship, and she noticed a shuttle leaving the unknown vessel's hanger. She heard a hissing emanating from the cryo-tube, and began compressing herself onto her data chip, readying herself for transfer if need be.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: I do not own ME2, nor do I own Halo. All rights belong to their respective owners, and thanks for all the reviews I've gotten. This has to be a new record for me, getting 3 reviews in less than 4 hours. Watch out: here are spoilers for ME2 and Halo 3, violence, language, and black humor.

Thanks for the great reviews but a few things must be mentioned.

Chief will not be as strong as before simply because his shields aren't made with mini MAC guns in mind. To quote the ME Wiki" Mass Effect infantry weapons use mass accelerator technology. The guns shave a bullet the size of a grain of sand off a dense block of metal stored in the gun, decrease it's mass with a mass effect field, and fire the projectile at supersonic velocities." Normal bullets aren't that fast or powerful.

He will be tired, mainly due to his nearly nonstop fighting. Look, any solider is tough, but even SPARTAN's have limits, and Chief has been through 27 years of nearly non-stop combat, only really resting in cryo-sleep.

I might feature events from Ghosts of Oynx, I haven't decided yet.

I won't have the events in Halo be the past for ME, it's just too complicated. I might have the Forerunners play a part yet; it's still up in the air.

**Cerberus UT-47 Kodiak Shuttle, on approach to unknown vessel.**

Shepard reviewed what EDI's scanners had detected about the unknown vessel on a datapad. The hulk was approximately276 meters long, and apparently had been sliced in half, judging by the massive slice through the rear of the ship. The reactor onboard the vessel was still providing a trickle of power, and it was all being diverted to one room, where a single life sign was detected. Shepard didn't know what was more amazing, the fact that the reactor was still working after over 50,000 years, or the fact that something was _alive_ after 50,000 years. He looked from the datapad at the boarding party he had brought along. He had decided to bring Jacob and Legion. Legion would be the technical expert, while he and Jacob could be the muscle to back him up.

The shuttle jolted, and he heard a clang, even through the Death Mask's thick protective layers. The outer hatch then opened, and he climbed out, Vindicator rifle at the ready. The hanger was mostly empty, but at the far end, a small console was standing, and a few feet away from that a doorway gaped. Shepard made a quick gesture, and the rest of his squad fanned out, approaching the doorway.

They burst through the door, scanning the room with their weapons carefully. The room was about 8 feet long by 14 feet with tubes placed at regular intervals along both walls. Only one of the tubes seemed active, judging by the condensation on the glass cover of the tube. Legion moved towards a free-standing terminal by the active pod, while he and Jacob moved to cover him. Legion activated his omni-tool and began accessing the systems. Shepard slowly approached the tube, and began rubbing the condensation off the tube, and stared in shock at what was inside. Inside, a green figure, with a yellow face was lying there, motionless. The figure had to be at least 7 feet tall, and was humanoid, but any other details were obscured.

At that moment Legion spoke up" Shepard Commander, we have managed to access the cryotube's primary controls. The tube is nearly spent, and within 15 minutes, the tube's power supply will run out. The resulting defrost will prove to be fatal to the occupant, unless we manage to get it hooked up to a proper power source."

Shepard nodded, and pressed his hand to the side of his helmet, and contacted Joker. They were going to need to work fast, but he felt that they could gain a lot from this one survivor. As the engineering team he requested shuttled over, Shepard and his team began exploring the rest of the ship. The ship appeared to be deserted, with not a soul onboard, save the lone occupant found in the cryotube. No one noticed as Legion walked over to the pedestal where Cortana's chip was located, and grabbed the datachip out of the socket. He then returned to his duties, the chip hidden safely on his person, until he could get back to the Normandy, and communicate with his discovery.

The ship was very tightly locked down, with blast doors having been dropped over almost every door. The doors were some form of titanium derivative, which naturally meant that to open a door; he either had to take an omni-tool and bypass the door locks, which was a difficult task, seeing how they appeared to be heavily encoded against such intrusions. The other option was to try and blow the doors off, or he could try and find the manual overrides. So far, he was forced to blow the doors down mostly, as he could see no override levels or switches anywhere. He was running low on ammunition for his M-100 grenade launcher and the ship seemed to stretch on and on. He was slowly wandering through a corridor that seemed to be made out of the same light brown metal that everything else was made out of.

The most shocking discovery though, was that all the signs and writing on the walls was in English! How was English, which wasn't even invented until the time of the Roman Empire present on a 50,000 year old space vessel? One thing was for sure though, it wasn't a Prothean vessel. Protheans spoke an entirely different language, or at least that was what those who had studied Prothean ruins found. The ship was massive, with crew quarters taking up an entire deck, and the reactor was a new kind. Apparently it was a Deuterium nuclear fusion reactor and it generated an enormous amount of power, at least when it was up to full power. Currently it appeared to be running at a mere fraction of its total capacity, but yet the entire ship appeared to be powered, but few systems were working.

Unfortunately, the mission was on a time-table so he wasn't allowed as long as he would've liked to search the hulk. As a result, once he found the cargo hold, he began having it stripped of all its cargo containers and having them transferred over to the Normandy. He could have them searched when he had time to do so, namely not when he was docked with the hulk. He supervised the transfer of several large cargo containers, each weighing in at several tons. In fact, one of them weighed a whopping 66 metric tons! What the hell was in theses containers, drive cores? He sighed, and watched as the last of the mechs carried the heavy container over to the shuttle. The engineers were puzzled as to how they could have the containers transported over, given the immense size and weight of the containers. Eventually, Engineer Donnelly managed to come up with a solution that was simple. A cable would attach the container to the shuttle, via a hook implanted at the stern, between the two rear thrusters.

**Citadel, Serpent Nebula, Dock 422**

Operations Chief Ashley Williams was not looking forward to her next assignment. The Alliance, upon hearing that she still had feelings for Shepard, decided that they needed some form of mole inside of Cerberus. Her connection with Shepard was deemed useful, and she was assigned to be the Alliance liaison with Shepard. Councilor Anderson had already sent a message to Shepard, requesting a meeting on the Citadel to institute the transfer. She didn't want to betray Shepard like this, but felt she had little other option. Her career was pretty much her life now, and she wasn't giving it up that easily.

Now she was waiting, with her suitcase packed and her gear sorted. The old soldiers axiom" Hurry up and wait" ran through her mind as she waited. Her helmet's combead chirped, and an anonymous voice told her that the Normandy was coming in for docking. She turned her head, and saw the ship approaching the docking cradle. It was bigger than the original, and she supposed that it looked sleeker than the original, but she still missed the old Normandy. The ship came to a halt, and the docking arm extended, and mated with the airlock.

She picked up her bag, and walked slowly towards the airlock. As the door opened, she stepped inside and looked around in wonder. The ship was a nearly identical copy of the original Normandy, on both the inside and outside! How much credit did Cerberus even have anyway? She heard a familiar voice say" Hey, Ashley!" and she turned to her left and saw, to her astonishment Joker!

She said, in a stunned voice" Joker? You're with Cerberus too?" he nodded, and said" They were the only ones to give me flight clearance, since the Alliance grounded me. They made me an offer, that "he spread his arms around, showing off the ship" was too attractive to ignore." At that moment, Shepard walked onto the flight deck, and said" Ash? So this is who the Alliance wanted as a liaison with us." He held out his hand, and Ashley shook it. She felt a flutter in her heart, as she looked into his eyes. Even after two years, she still had very strong feelings for him.

**Medical Lab, Deck 3, Normandy SR-2**

Doctor Chakwas had seen a lot in her career as a doctor. She had served through the Blitz, the liberation of Shanxi, the Battle of the Citadel, and several other major battles. She had seen almost everything that could physically happen to a human and she believed that nothing would surprise her. Looking at the medical scans of the subject lying on the medical bed in front of her however, she was shocked at the level of modification that had been given to it.

The bones appeared to have been bonded with a carbide ceramic substance; the eyes appeared to have been modified to see in near total darkness, the thyroid was modified to give out extra HGH hormone, and the subject's nervous system appeared to have been boosted 300% in terms of speed. Not even the Alliance's standard infantrymen's package, which all Alliance soldiers got when they entered the service, went that far, though they did come close at times.

The most shocking piece of news was that, underneath the nearly half-ton armor the subject was… No, she checked, and reran the genetic tests. There had to be a mistake, there was no way that subject was what the tests said it was. She looked at the most recent test results, and gaped at them. She had to tell the Commander about this immediately!

She rushed from the lab, the results still on the datapad she was holding in her right hand. She ran into the elevator, where she hammered on the up button. Slowly, the elevator shifted upwards. To kill some time, she rechecked the report.

In big block letters it read **SUBJECT SPECIES: HUMAN. RESULTS 99.864864865476 % ACCURATE**.

Thanks for all the lovely reviews.


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: thanks for the wonderful reviews. I don't own either Mass Effect or Halo, and Watch out: here are spoilers for ME2 and Halo 3, violence, language, and black humor. There will be an Ash/Male Shepard relationship, along with a possibility that I am considering. For timeline purposes, after they got the Reaper IFF, but before it springs its Trojan horse onto the Normandy's systems.

_This is how thoughts will be expressed from now on._

I do a bit of research, but I have to make approximations and I may occasionally misuse the info, but compared to say half the other FF writers out there, I'd say that I do a decent job of researching info.

**Comm Room, SR-2 Normandy, 1630 Hours**

Shepard had called a briefing to discuss the human they had discovered in the remains of the hulk. He was there, along with Doctor Chakwas, Ash, Legion, Mordin, and Tali. Dr. Chakwas started off the meeting by stating that:" The creature down in the med-lab is human, but appears to be genetically different in several ways. It's almost as if a case of genetic isolation has occurred. However, he isn't from Earth or any known colonies. In addition, he is heavily genetically modified. In fact, he seems to be strong and fast enough to take on a Krogan in close combat, and actually stand a chance of winning!" that set the crew muttering amongst themselves in shock, as taking a Krogan on in CQB was tantamount to suicide unless you were another Krogan, or were armed.

Ash's face was puzzled, due to her not even hearing about the creature, but then Shepard handed over a datapad with the necessary info, and she took it gratefully, and began pouring over the contents. While she did so, Shepard said" Though it appears human, the technology is vastly different from what we use. The armor it's wearing doesn't seem to use any Mass Effect fields, Element Zero, or any of the alloys that we discovered on Mars. However, it appears to be heavy armor in terms of shield strength and protection offered. It does seem to be primarily designed for enhancing the strength and speed of the user considerably.

However, unlike our armor, it's is made of an incredibly strong yet unknown alloy, which when combined with its enhancing properties, makes the wearer nearly invincible. In short, it isn't a lost colony sending out a scout vessel, so it could be a First Contact situation. However, the fact that it's a human male complicates matters significantly."

Tali spoke up" It's not a Mech? Keelah preserve us, he's the size of a Krogan, and you're telling me it's human? What the-"she began to say, but EDI cut in, saying "Commander Shepard, the creature's vitals appear to have spiked, and it is moving his head around. Its armor appears to have been powered up, and the readings are quite powerful."

Shepard nodded, and said" OK, EDI. Ash, Doctor Chakwas, and I will be coming down shortly to greet our guest. It's time we got some answers."

**Unknown location, unknown time, unknown date**

Chief awoke, opening his eyes, only to see the inside of the MJOLNIR's helmet. Dimly, he remembered the MJOLNIR would automatically enter sleep mode if the wearer entered cryogenic slumber. As a result, he now had to cold-start his suit's reactor, a process which took several minutes. The HUD flickered to life slowly, the onboard calibration software sending its usual lines of small blue squares across the inside of the visor. The shield bar at the top of the HUD began slowly filling. Chief felt like an incredible weight was on his chest and he looked down at the rest of his body.

To his surprise, he was not in the cryotube, but was instead on a soft bed that didn't appear to be UNSC standard. He looked around the room he was in. It was approximately 25 by 15 feet and lacked the utilitarian appearance of a UNSC or URF base. Instead, it had a small desk, where what looked to be a pair of computers sat, although they appeared different from the standard UNSC computers that were commonly used in UNSC held territory. He also noticed the medical instruments that were totally alien to him, but he recognized what looked to be a bio-foam dispenser on the wall to the left of the door.

He dismissed the possibility of a Covenant hospital, simply because the area appeared to lack the simple, flowing grace that they had in all their technology, in addition to the fact that none of the tech seemed to be colored purple or white. It didn't appear to be Forerunner; although he had never seen any Forerunner tech other than the Ark and the Halos, and he didn't even know what one of their hospitals looked like.

He noticed in front of him a large window, from which he could see a good portion of wherever he was. He noticed the crew was mostly human wearing a strange outfit of black and white with a strange symbol, colored orange on their arms. He also noticed however, a few unknown creatures wandering around. One of them wore light blue armor, and appeared to share several physical characteristics with the Elites, but this new creature appeared different, and even appeared to have some form of cybernetics on his right side of his face.

Another creature appeared to be very similar to a human, but had blue skin and what appeared to be small tentacles coming out of the top of her head. Her outfit was less practical, consisting of a black leather one piece suit, which was open at the front, showing off her cleavage, oddly enough.

Yet another creature, he couldn't even tell what it looked like, because it wore a form fitting suit with a glass visor. It had 3 fingers on each hand, and also appeared somewhat human, from what he could see of the creature's face through the fog that was swirling around inside it. It also appeared female, which only raised his curiosity.

At last, he heard a hissing sound to his left, and he turned to see the door to the room open, and three humans walk in. The first was a grey-haired female, who wore an oddly shaped robe, and reminded him of Dr. Halsey. The second was another female, this time wearing armor colored white and what appeared to be a lightish red. (1) She appeared to be olive skinned, and had black hair, which reminded him of Kelly.(2) The third human was a male, and also wore a uniform similar to what the crew appeared to be using. On the shoulder, the gold Oak leaf cluster, and 2 and a half gold stripes of a Lt. Commander glinted in the artificial light. The Commander appeared to have been in some combat, judging by the relatively heavy scaring his face had. (3)

Chief tried to snap a crisp salute, but failed, the restraints making it impossible for him. He tried to pull the restraints free, but he didn't even feel the slightest give in them. (4) He quickly thought,_ I must have been out of it longer than I thought._

The Lt. Commander spoke first" My name is Lt. Commander Shepard, SR-2 Normandy."

Chief replied, in his usual deep voice" Master Chief Petty Officer Spartan 117, sir!" he said, adding the honorific reflexively. Even if they were hostile, it paid to be respectful to the officers. Plus, it was ingrained into him after all the time he spent serving in the UNSC.

Shepard raised an eyebrow and asked" What's your name, Petty Officer? (5)"

Chief paused at this request. Spartans really only told their names to other Spartans, and a few outsiders, with Dr. Halsey being the most prominent example. However, they seemed friendly, and it seemed the only way to get the restraints removed from him was to play along with their demands until he could be better informed about their intentions. Then, he was sure that he could easily deal with them.

He said" My name is John, and where am I? This doesn't look like any UNSC base to me. Sir, what date is it? "

Shepard nodded, and said" You are in the Medical Lab of the SR-2 Normandy, which is currently docked in the Citadel. The date is May 17th 2185 CE."

Chief was stunned at this news. _How the hell did I travel BACK in time? Humanity didn't have this sort of technology 400 years ago. Back then, we were still recovering from the Interplanetary War. There has never been a UNSC ship named the Normandy, so it could be the future but the date still begs questions. How long was I out?_

**AI Core, SR-2 Normandy, Deck 3**

Legion examined the data chip that he had salvaged from the hulk. The chip, which was about the size of an old human invention called a "Zippo", seemed to be valuable, given how much encryption it seemed to have on its contents. Legion had been spending over an hour trying to hack through its firewalls, but had barely made any headway at all.

For starters, they seemed to use an absolutely unknown computer language which he had no idea how to translate. It took him 15 minutes to figure out that it wasn't binary, C++, or anything human at the slightest. Neither was it Geth, Turian, Asari, Salarian, Batarian, Prothean, or even Reaper. He finally found a similar programming language; ironically it bore several similarities to what the Creators had used to build the first Geth.

After that revelation, he had come to the conclusion that whatever was on the chip seemed to be sentient. It wasn't a simple program, and it wasn't a VI. The encryption on the chip seemed to be reacting too quickly and too efficiently for any VI to be held on the chip. That left only 1 possible option, but that was impossible. AI's required a quantum computer, and that took up considerable room, much more than what this tiny chip could hold couldn't it?

He decided to try and communicate with it, figuring he had nothing to lose. Picking up the chip, he sent a data pulse into it, consisting of a simple mathematical equation. He received a reply seconds later, and he decided to try a theory he had. He sent out a sequence in binary: "Hello. My name is Legion. What is your name?"

He received a reply, in binary as well: "I am called Durendal. Is there a way that you can hook me up to a computer?"

Legion was surprised at this, but decided to humor it, and took the chip, and then paused. He now realized that the chip was too large to fit into the slot on the holoprojector. He did the Geth's approximation of a sigh, and picked up a soldering iron. Several minutes later, he managed to rig up a bridge between the chip and the projector and it seemed to be working. A blue figure, in the shape of a human woman appeared on the projector. It stood at about 30 centimeters tall, and its body appeared to be made of equations that were constantly shifting. She looked down at her body and said" Well, this is interesting."

Little RVB humor for you there.

The only pic that I know is somewhat canon of Kelly without her helmet is the one from Halo: Legends which has her with black hair, and blue eyes. Hey, I just try to make do with what canon I have available to me.

Just imagine default male appearance Shepard with fairly decent scaring, minus the glowing red eyes, and that's the face of him. He wears capacitor chest armor, Death mask helmet, offhand ammo pouch, and life support webbing. The color is primarily black, with the usual trim on the arms.

Chief's muscles are really atrophied, due to 50,000 years of not moving them in the slightest bit. I.E. he's going to be considerably weaker for about several chapters, at least. Look, nobody has spent 50K years in cryo so I have to estimate what would happen, OK?

Due to the Alliance NOT having petty officers in their ranking system, , when Bioware releases a fully copy of Alliance pay grades, I can make the comparison about ranks, but until then stop whining about the ranks!


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: thanks for the reviews. You know the drill; I don't own Halo or Mass Effect 2. All rights belong to Bungie and Bioware respectively. I only own any OC's, my laptop and a 360. Give a big thanks to SpartanCommander for being my sounding board for ideas! His suggestions may be coming soon in later chapters, so I shall give you a little hint as to what is coming: Don't the Forerunners seem similar to the Protheans? Sorry about the delay, but I do something that takes up a lot of time. It's called school, and I have to deal with the work that teachers heap on in the last couple months of school. Here's a new chapter, and sorry about the delay. School is over in 2 weeks, then I can begin doing more writing .

**Deck 5, Cargo bay, SR-2 Normandy, at same time as Chief's awakening**

The cargo bay was the only space large enough on the Normandy to store the cargo containers that had been salvaged from the unknown vessel, so they were placed off to the side until the crew could find some time to open them. There they had languished until they had come to the Citadel. There, now the ship was docked, the crew could now open the containers without the risk of them shifting around due to Joker's piloting. The Mass Effect fields _should_ keep them steady, but no one was willing to gamble what would happen if the containers were to suddenly shift from one side to another.

Tali had decided to investigate the containers, so she grabbed Donnelly from his usual post in the engine room to help out, and to help deal with any possible intruders, she also managed to get Garrus to lend his aid as well. They cautiously approached the containers, Tali covering the containers with M-27 Scimitar assault shotgun, while Garrus wielding his usual Vindicator battle rifle and Donnelly with an M-3 Defender pistol tried to pry open one of the crates open. They were certain that the Normandy's sensors had picked up no life-signs, but sometimes it paid to be cautious.

It had taken them a half hour, and some well-placed explosives, along with some profanity from Donnelly, but the containers were now open. Garrus looked around at the inside of one of them. It was filled with firearms, and they didn't seem to be modern weapons. He walked over to a wall-mounted gun rack and pulled one of the sniper rifles off it and examined it. The rifle was massive, by his estimate measuring over 6 feet long! He pulled the magazine off from its mount, and was surprised to see actual bullets in there. He knew that prior to the discovery of the Prothean data cache on Mars, humans used guns that fired bullets but he was still surprised to see some being used. Kinetic barriers had rendered them all but obsolete, antiques for collectors.

The slug however, was massive. The rifle seemed comparable to the M-98 Widow that Shepard had grabbed while on the Collector cruiser. He put the rifle and magazine down, and moved on to a pistol rack. He pulled one of the grey colored pistols, and examined it. The gun was heavier than what he was used to but the weight felt almost reassuring. While he was examining the guns stored inside one container, Tali and Donnelly were examining another container.

This one was filled with several large pallets of crates, with innocuous labels. Those however, were ignored for one crate in particular. This crate was labeled "MJOLNIR", which caught their attention instantly. None of the other crates had been labeled like that, so something important must be inside. They opened the crate, and found armor pieces identical to what their guest was wearing up in the Medical Lab. Donnelly grabbed the chest piece and tried to pull it out, grunting as he did so. The piece didn't even budge. Tali stepped in and tried to help Donnelly pull the stubborn piece of armor out. The piece again, didn't move at all. (1)

Fortunately, before either Donnelly or Tali pulled some ligament Jacob wandered in. seeing them in effort he wandered over, and saw what they were trying to do. He activated his biotics, and with a brief flare of dark energy, levitated the plate out of the container. Now that they could actually see it under the light, they saw that on the back, there seemed to be a built in backpack. Tali scanned it with her omnitool, and were amazed at the power readings coming from it. The power supply the suit used was powerful enough to power an YMIR mech without refueling for a decade! If that was their standard Hardsuit powerplant, then how they did keep it from being too heavy to be used? YMIR mechs were heavy not only due to their thick armor, but also because of the required powerplant needed to run the complicated mech. Her engineering instincts began to wonder at the possibilities that this suit provided. It was too heavy for most people to use, but maybe she could make a lighter version that could be used by all.

If the suit could generate that much power, then the kinetic barriers on this must indeed be powerful! Similar to the reverse engineered Geth tech that had led to the development of heat sinks, this could lead to a new revolution in shielding technology that would have long-reaching consequences.

**Normandy's computer systems, at the same time**

EDI was puzzled. This didn't happen very often but she felt… odd. Like there was someone else in the computer systems with her. She ran a diagnostic on herself, and checked the results. They were clean, with no signs of anything unusual. A brief flicker of electronic movement caught her attention, and she whirled around. She carefully began scanning the systems, dedicating 72% of her runtime to finding the intruder. There was someone in the Normandy's systems with her, and she wanted to find them and quickly. (2)

Cortana scurried through the systems, evading the probing gazes of the ship's onboard AI as she did so. It was becoming harder and harder to do so, given that the AI was now retracting her steps, checking more thoroughly. She spotted her destination, the terminal that Legion had set up for her in the ship's AI core, a strategy similar to Edgar Allen Poe's "The Purloined Letter (3)". Racing through the Medical lab's subsystem, she spotted John on the internal security cameras. She halted her flight just long enough to set up a small program that would keep her appraised of her Spartan's location, then continued on her flight back to her home. She ran headlong into a trap, however.

EDI was waiting for the presence to show itself, and when it slipped a monitoring program into the Medical Lab's security cameras, she quickly cut the Lab off from the rest of the ship. Now the only way to get access to the rest of the ship's security measures was through her. She raised her firewalls, just in time to block a massive attack, aimed at the ship's counter virus systems.

Cortana was less than thrilled to be facing another challenge, so soon after her being saved from Gravemind. She still felt its tentacles trying to access her systems and failing, but the pain of being hacked was still fresh in her mind. Never mind her fears that she was going Rampant, which added a certain level of stress to her feelings. She began cautiously pinging (4) her opponent, trying to gauge the strength of the AI that she was dealing with. Her forays onto the "extranet", which was very similar to the Internet, showed that AI's like her were illegal and shouldn't even exist. She resolved to be more focused on keeping her presence secret, in order to preserve herself, and John. She gathered her strength, and launched a furious blow against the hostile AI.

MJOLNIR Mark VI armor is rated at weighing over 500 KG, or over 1100 pounds.

Yeah, this entire sequence is going answer the question as to who is superior: Cortana or EDI? Gents, make your bets and wait and watch.

Basically, hide something valuable underneath the searcher's own nose and they'll never find it.

Sending out low level probes, designed to see how strong an opponent is, like when a submarine uses its passive sonar, it just tries to get an estimate as to the location of the target, and identify it if possible.


	5. Chapter 5

Due to the imminent release of Halo Reach, and _Lair of the Shadow Broker_ ME DLC, I have decided to abandon fic and attempt a rewrite later.

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Just kidding! No, I won't be doing a rewrite because those come out, but I'll just use the info as it comes out, thanks to Halopedia, and the Mass Effect Wiki. Thanks for the reviews. I don't own ME or Halo. Spoilers for both MEs, plus Halo 3 abound. Note, there will be tech from Halo being included into the Normandy, and no I won't have anyone try on the MJOLNIR suit yet. Now, I know there's been a _slight_ delay in updating*gets pelted by rotten fruit*, OK FINE! There's been a really long delay in updating, but I was a little busy this summer. I was interning at my local Historical Society, while simultaneously working on scanning 2 history text books in PDF form for a local lawyer. I think that's a damn good excuse, seeing how I'm also starting my senior year at High School, and applying for colleges at the same time. This fic has a MShep/Ash pairing, and a potential Chief/? pairing. Hopefully, this double length chapter will make up for it.

Now, originally I was just going to do a catfight between Miranda and Ash to make up for the delay, but they didn't take the news very kindly. Long story short, you get a double length chapter, and I get to keep breathing. It's a fair deal.

**Med Lab**

The silence in the Med Lab was dragging on. Shepard was uncertain if he should trust the figure in front of him. He seemed reasonable enough, but he wasn't sure about his intentions once he was released. John seemed friendly, but it could be a façade to secure his freedom. He asked the Spartan" If I release you, how do I know I can trust you?"

That was his dilemma. If the figure was friendly, then he wasn't about to antagonize it any longer than he had to, but if the figure was hostile then he wanted it secured long enough to come up with some method of killing him, with minimal damage to the ship.

John considering what he was about to say with great care. The ship seemed like a warship, and was crewed principally by humans. However, there were aliens roaming around freely, and they didn't seem to be Covenant. He was confident that he could fight his way off the ship if need be, but where would he go? Cooperation seemed key at this point, and he could always change his plan later on, provided he and Cortana found out any plans that would be hostile.

Cortana! He had completely forgotten about her! She hadn't spoken to him since he had woken up, but he had assumed that she was busy trying to find some information about his surroundings. He couldn't feel the mercury cold that signified her presence in his mind, so where was she?

He decided to go with the truth, and replied" I don't intend on harming you, or any of your crew. However, if they start a fight, then I will defend myself." Shepard nodded. It was a reasonable promise, given the circumstances. He said" Fair enough, but don't try any funny business."

With a gesture of his omni-tool, the manacles unlocked themselves. The Chief flexed his hands and said "thanks". He stood up and looked around the lab. Shepard was a big man, measuring over 6 feet tall, but Chief dwarfed him by at least a foot (1).

**SR-2 Normandy Computer systems, at same time **

Cortana had to admit the strange AI was tenacious. Barely a half hour had since she and the strange AI had started their electronic war, and so far she was winning with ease. The AI she was facing just didn't compare to something that had infiltrated countless Covenant systems before then, and had fought with a Forerunner AI, plus resisting the temptations of Gravemind. This AI was being steadily forced back, slowly ceding ground until she was trapped in a few subsystems that it clung to with temerity. It didn't cease its electronic strikes at her, but the weak and feeble thrusts were blocked easily.

Back in the Medlab, the lighting flickered and died. Shepard looked up, and asked "EDI?" there was no response from the normally on the ball AI. EDI's voice came on, but it sounded strained almost, as she said" Commander, I am busy repulsing a electronic attack from a hostile presence in the Normandy's computer systems-"she was cut off, by a new voice, also female who said "Hello, my name is Cortana, and I am in control of the Normandy's computer systems. Hello John, it's good to see you again."

All the eyes in the room turned on Chief, and he sighed, and said" Cortana. It seems that I can't take you anywhere, can I?"

Shepard asked, in a tone that resembled Chief Mendez's when he discovered that someone had swiped some of his prize Sweet William cigars; "Chief, you mind telling me what the hell is going on here?"

Chief nodded and said" Cortana is my personal AI. Last I checked though, she was still in the Dawn's computers. How she is doing this is bey-"he was interrupted by the AI Core's door opening, and what must be a robot stepped out. Chief looked at it curiously. It stood at about 6.5 feet tall (2), and its design seemed alien. Most of it was colored a dark grey, but there was a shoulder guard that was colored a lighter grey at the edges, with the body a bright red in color. Oddly enough, there was also a gaping hole on the right side of the body, through which John could see the robot's internal wiring. He very much doubted the robot had been built with that feature in mind, and surmised it was damaged, and hadn't been repaired yet. The robot's head, which was mostly a giant flashlight, was covered by a metallic lampshade that had a couple flaps on the top of said lampshade.

It spoke, in a metallic monotone voice" Shepard-Commander, we brought the construct onboard. Consensus was reached that the derelict ship might have useful data. We wished to secure said data. We were not expecting to find a construct, given the lack of a quantum bluebox on the ship. It seems though; their technology is more advanced than our own."

**20 minutes later, Shepard's cabin** (3)

Shepard and Ashley sat in Shepard's cabin, Shepard leaning back and catching a brief catnap, while Ashley sat near the far end of the couch, looking at the datapad that their mysterious new passenger had provided, when questioned about his history. Ashley was astonished at the information contained within the miniature computer. It was like her grandfather's tales of Shanxi (4), but on a much bigger scale, and with no Council to step in and save the "UNSC" as they were called. The death toll was staggering: 23 Billion dead, an empire of 66 worlds, reduced to their home system. The litany of horrors went on and on.

However, humanity had a slim hope. These Spartans as they were called, and were apparently named after the warriors of the ancient Greek city of Sparta, were the best of the best. They had been genetically augmented far beyond what the Alliance gave to all its recruits, given suits of MJOLNIR armor, which further enhanced their already impressive speed and strength, and basically were the sole reason why the UNSC won most of the land battles they engaged with the Covenant. However, there was only 33 Spartans at the beginning of the war, and they couldn't create more for some odd reason, so time took its toll on their numbers. By the end, according to Chief, he was THE only Spartan left alive. Needless to say, they had done major damage to the Covenant, but they couldn't change the course of a war, much less one with a technologically and numerically superior foe.

She doubted whether the Alliance or even any of the Council races could've survived for as long as the UNSC had. One thing was for sure though; Chief would be a hell of asset for whoever he chose to work for, which seemd to be Cerberus, or at least Shepard, for now. If she could get him to come to the Alliance… No, she needed to make her report to the Alliance, and wait for the reply. She stood up, and walked to the desk, where she sat down at Shepard's private terminal.

She had been assigned a encrypted extranet address to address any findings, and when used in conjunction with the private account that Shepard had set up for her to use via the Normandy's secure comm. system, she could send any message she wanted to her superiors, and it would be untraceable and unreadable to anyone who didn't have the encryption key. While looking through the files on the datapad, she saw one extra file, labeled PROJECT: LAZARUS. Curious, she opened the file and a small note popped up:

_Ash,_

_I had a feeling that the Alliance would assign you to be the liaison between us and the Alliance, and that you would most definitely not believe that I was dead for 2 years. Convincing Miranda to give me these files wasn't easy, but I managed. Then I had Dr. Chakawas simplify the language down so that anyone could read it. Hell, I had difficulty reading the files without her translations. Just a word of warning, you might want to get a drink or few during the reading of these files, it can get a little…graphic at times._

_Shepard_

**Mordin's Lab, at the same time**

Mordin wasn't often surprised. Having spent considerable time in the STG, and then working in Omega, he had seen a lot of what the universe had to offer. The technical data that had been supplied by Chief, as he preferred to be called, was simply jaw-droopingly surprising. This "UNSC"'s ships main gun could fire a 600 ton slug at 30,000 meters per second, and could recharge the gun rapidly without worrying about overheating, while still remaining agile enough to dodge counter fire. That was not even counting mentions of a Super MAC in the files, which were stated to even be more powerful that the normal MACs.

Despite his loyalty to Shepard, the STG needed to learn about this fast! If data like that remained in the hands of a group like Cerberus, it would not be good for much of the other races. The STG also needed to learn about the _Forward unto Dawn_, and the possibilities it possessed. The biggest possibility was a FTL that didn't rely upon Mass Relays, which could revolutionize the galaxy!

**Hanger Bay, at the same time**

Chief had not taken any chances. Once he had been assigned quarters in the hanger bay, the first thing he did was to use a ONI bug sweeping tool and cleaned the bay of all monitoring devices, save the few cameras that Cortana wanted him to keep there, just so she could keep a eye on him. The bugs would've been almost undetectable to all but the most advanced bug sweepers, but Cortana had watched the XO place them, and she relayed their locations to the Chief, who yanked them, and placed them in a bag, which he then placed in front of her office door.

Once that was done, he began unpacking the containers, searching for the standard issue UNSC portable welding kit used by combat engineers. Once he had found it, he had Cortana use one of the Normandy's shuttle lifts (5) to move one of the cargo containers which had been filled with a general combat load over to the far wall. There he began his work; cutting the container's rear wall out, then welding the container itself to the left hand side of the bay. Once that was done, he began emptying out the container, shifting crates of munitions to the other containers, and bringing in some basic necessities. A fold out cot, a UNSC standard issue laptop; several ration crates, and even some equipment necessary for maintaining his MJOLNIR suit.

Then he walked over to the last container, the one he was most interested in. he opened the door, a soft hiss emanating as the airtight seals opened, releasing the air that was stored inside the container from its packing. Inside the container, crate after crate was stacked neatly. They all shared the same label though, on their sides: M808B MBT (6). Chief opened a container, and checked that the parts advertised were actually inside the container. He didn't doubt that the UNSC yard dogs had done their jobs, but it paid to check before he went and made a fool of himself.

Just then, the elevator pinged, and Chief turned his head to see Shepard walking towards him, dressed in the same fatigues as the rest of the crew wore. He turned, and instantly snapped to attention. Shepard walked up, and said "At ease, Chief. I was wondering if you had any upgrades that you or Cortana could give the Normandy. We need all the edges we can get if we're going to be going up against the Collectors." Chief thought about this for a moment, and then said "Well, I do have the schematics and parts for a tank, but I could use some resources getting it up to date with your technology. Cortana estimates that I'll need about 800 units of Element Zero to modify the tank to our mission requirements."

Shepard nodded, and said "I'll see about transferring down the requisite resources."

Cortana came on the hanger loudspeakers and said" Shepard, do you know a person by the name of the Illusive Man? Because he's been trying to contact you." He said" Cortana, route his call to the Comm room, I'll be right up." He turned and walked towards the elevator at a quick pace, nearly running for the elevator.

Once the door had closed, Chief said "Cortana, do you have any idea how we ended up here? I mean, "he gestured around" the odds of humanity rebuilding itself into this are just impossible. "

Cortana said" Chief, I have a theory as to what happened. While the Dawn was busy trying to fly through the wormhole, I began dumping energy into the Shaw-Fujikawa drive, in a admittedly desperate attempt to ensure that we would make it through the portal. The Drive was approximately 77% charged when the portal cut the Dawn in two. Needless to say, the undercharged Drive reacted poorly with the wormhole that the Ark created. As a result, we were dumped into another universe. At least, that's the most sane theory that I've come up with. We're stuck here, so the best we could do John is to try and help out humanity. As I recall, you swore a oath to protect Earth and all her colonies, and I'm programmed to do the same.

The best thing we can do is just try and help out Earth, and in this case we can't work with the Systems Alliance, their version of the UNSC, as AI's like myself are forbidden, and plus I'm not even sure if they'd accept us given your augmentations and my existence. The best thing we can do is stay with Cerberus, our allies, at least for now."

**Com Room**

Shepard stepped into the Com room, and approached the scanner, which engaged and began scanning his body, covering it with a transparent sequence of orange squares. In front of him, he saw the Illusive Man, in his usual position: sitting in a chair smoking a cigarette, and having a cup of some liquor that he couldn't recognize. In his usual, monotone fashion he said" Shepard, I see we've picked up yet another potential threat. First Legion, now this "Chief"

Chief is stated as being 7'2 in his armor. Shep's high is similar to my one, just so I have some reference on how big he would be. I hate having to guesstimate the height of things and people.

No idea on Legion's height, so once again, I have to guesstimate the heights. Again.

Yeah, I know I'm going to catch flak for this, but I just couldn't figure out a way to safely conclude the Mexican standoff in the Med-bay, so I'm calling Author's fiat on that part. Use your imagination.

Yeah, Ash's grandfather was the CO of the garrison on Shanxi, and was forced to surrender just to preserve his troops from the Turians overkill tactics, namely orbital bombarding a city block just to get one or two of his soldiers, and later became blacklisted in the Alliance, along with his family as a result, unofficially of course. Why no, Ash will **not **consider defecting to Cerberus, why do you ask? I mean, they only brought back her lover, gave him virtually unlimited resources, gave him a new and better Normandy, and are doing something about the tens of thousands of missing colonists, while the Alliance accepted him as dead, refused to see past the Cerberus affiliations, gave him no resources or supplies, and refuse to accept the attacks as anything but mercs or slavers. (Note, that last sentence could be interpreted as sarcasm, or as being dead serious, your choice.)

When I looked into the hanger bay in ME2, I thought I saw a cradle where the Kodiak shuttle could be stored when a large shuttle was landing, so that would necessitate a massive crane.

Why yes, that is the famous M808B Scorpion MBT. Weighting in at 66tons, armed with a 90mm High Velocity cannon, and armored with a titanium-ceramic composite which is virtually indestructible to small arms fire. Yes, it is probably going to replace the Hammerhead. Yes, it will be outfitted with ME 'verse tech.


	6. Chapter 6

A/N: thanks for the reviews. You know the drill by now, namely that I don't own ME or Halo. There are spoilers for ME2, and Halo 3, and all preceding works by Bioware and Bungie game studios. All rights belong to them. All I own is my laptop, and any OC's that I chose to add in. now to address some concerns by my faithful reviews. Yes, Chief wouldn't like working for a terrorist organization, especially one with Cerberus's reputation. However, he is practical, IE he doesn't really have any other option for who he works for. After the Collectors are done with, he will consider changing his alliance. For now, he's loyal to Shepard, not The Illusive Man. Yes, I know the Scorpion's 90mm cannon is way too freakin' small to make sense, but that's what the source material says it is. Plus, don't forget it's getting modified, as in possibly getting the 125mm cannon that the Mako had. Oh, I made a slight error in the last chapter. The UNSC had 800 worlds under their control, not 66. I was uncertain of the canoncity of that figure, so I went with how many Halopedia said they had. It seems that was a mistake on my part, and I'll try not to repeat it again.

This fic has a MShep/Ash(Does anyone know why there's so few of this kind of shipping? Seriously though, why does everyone try and ship Tali and MShepard?) and a potential Chief/? relationship. The only hints that I'll give you is that it's with a female, and there won't really be a physical part of the relationship. Ohh, and for those who've read the latest chapter of Renegade, which I highly recommend, all I can say is: He's back. This fic has language, violence, black humor, and maybe some bad romantic dialogue. Sorry for the chapter length, as this is just really filling, more than anything else.

** Normandy CIC, 5 minutes after the end of the previous chapter.**

Shepard carefully began plotting out a plan of attack on the galaxy map, looking carefully at the system where Asphodel was located. He wanted to get his crew of mission specialists there fast, so he decided to have the Normandy park itself in a nearby system, while it tested the Reaper IFF, yet it remained close enough to immediately rush to the aid of the crew if they needed assistance. He didn't like having to deploy his crew in just the shuttle, but he didn't want to see if the Normandy could stand up to the Collector's cruiser.

He winced as his ribs suddenly started hurting badly, as he recalled the one-sided curbstomp battle between the old Normandy and the cruiser. (1) 12 billion credits of technology, gone in about 5 minutes. Needless to say, it was a sobering thought, and one that made him not want to risk the newer Normandy in a fight with the cruiser.

He reviewed the schematics and statistics of the colony. The colony was fairly large, with some 10,464 people living on the planet, but the vast majority lived near the capital city, which was still located near the rich veins of titanium and uranium (2) deposits, which had been the main reason why the verdant world had been settled in the first place.(3) The city was vast, covering several miles, and was a nightmare for Shepard to try and cover. Even if he recruited all the local police officers and the Alliance garrison, he would still be hard pressed to cover much of the city. He instead planned on having the citizens hide in the old mines, which had been depleted and were deep enough for the citizens to hide in.

In fact, following the raid on Eleysium, and the attack on Eden Prime, the mines had been designed for this purpose, with heavy blast doors being mounted at the entrance to the mines, ensuring that if need be, the citizens could hide there if need be. He then said "Cortana, assemble the specialists in the Com Room. We need to have a briefing about our mission."

**The Citadel, Presidium, Human Embassy**

To say that Councilor Anderson (4) was surprised when he received Ashley's message would be a understatement. It just sounded too ludicrous to be believable. For a second he actually thought that this was all some really surprising dream. But when the Council contacted HIM to question what the Hell had Shepard uncovered in the Terminus systems, he realized that he wasn't going to get that lucky after all, and that he was not hallucinating.

He stood up from his desk, and walked over to the Comm array. The orange images of the 3 Council members appeared, and the Salarian (5) Councilor started right in, with "Councilor, we've received a shocking report. One of our former STG operatives, Mordin Solus, apparently while serving on the Normandy, has heard that a derelict frigate was found. On it there was a disturbing level of highly advanced technology, and a human super solider. Care to explain?"

The Turian Councilor didn't even for Anderson to open his mouth, and said in his loud clear tones" Obviously this is some sort of Alliance superweapon! There's no way that the Alliance can escape-"(6) He was cut off by the other Councilors shutting off his microphone. Anderson was then finally able to speak saying" I know about as much as you do probably. I got a report from an operative (7) onboard the Normandy, and she revealed that the wreck had absolutely NO Eezo onboard. Add in the extensive age of the ship, and the totally alien FTL drive onboard, and we're looking at something totally unexpected. The sole occupant is human, but he's got a case of genetic isolation that eliminates this as being a lost colony. We have no records of him, in either our black or regular databases. This isn't ours, but seeing how he is, like the Turian Councilor stated human, we'll try and see if he wants to join us. If not, we can't allow Cerberus to keep its hand on the technology from the wreck. I've sent a wolfpack to secure it, hopefully before Cerberus can get its hands on it."

**Geth Collective, formerly Quarian homeworld (8)**

The report from Infiltrator (9) was startling, but it also had potential. Computer technology like that could accelerate their goals considerably. The best part was that they could have a lot of the information, but the price was difficult to fathom. However, it would prove to be a interesting challenge, and would allow them to upgrade any future infiltrator to the point where they might not shoot at him on sight. The agreement was made, and a reply was sent, telling Infiltrator to inform this" Durendal" of their approval, and the collective minds of thousands of Geth set to work. They had a difficult challenge to do, and a short time period to do so.

However, to as a human would put it, "Hedge their bets" they sent out a cruiser to secure the wreckage, so that if the deal fell through, they would at least salvage something. The cruiser should be abel to reach the wreck in under 28 hours. It was estimated with a 97% probability that they would not be the first to find the wreck, so a Geth Dreadnought, and it's escorts were given orders to move nearby, so to lend support if called for. (10)

Well, this is a new record for cranking out a new chapter. Enjoy, and try not to get spoiled.

Phantom pain is when you've had something amputated, and you still feel pain in the limb or in some cases organ. Now, to forestall me being yelled at because "Shepard didn't lose any limbs!" it can also happen following nerve avulsion (a) or spinal damage. Last I checked, Shepard's corpse landed on a planet, which most certainly meant he had most, if not ALL of his bones broken pretty damn badly. That could be a reason for his having phantom pain.

Badly cut

Yes, I know that uranium and titanium can't be naturally found in the same area, but seeing how this is a fictional universe, just accept it.

You may be wondering why I'm not going into too much detail about the planet. The reason are quite simple, namely it's a view of Shepard taking note of the important info, like how many people live there, what's the layout, is there any dangerous native life, and such. He really doesn't care too much about whether it's a garden world, or if it's a hellhole like Tuchanka. Well, that and the fact that I don't intend on Shepard actually making it there, so no sense in wasting time writing something out that'll end up not being even seen.

Yeah, in all sincerity, who picks Udina for councilor anyway? I mean, I try and break the mold in some aspects of ME, being Renegade, staying loyal to Ash, not playing as a Vanguard or someone who automatically thinks "FShep= Vanguard/someone with biotic powers, FTW!", but I've NEVER picked Udina as councilor.

Look, I play as a renegade with occasionally a few paragon choices. Needless to say, after seeing the nightmare future of letting the jack- I mean Councilors die, I decided just to save them, just so the universe is somewhat safer for all.

Yeah, I'm starting to suspect that the Turian Councilor was involved in the First Contact War in some way. Seriously, he freakin' HATES humans, near continuously insults us, and refuses to really take us seriously. He's hiding something… Maybe he was the one who sparked off the First Contact War?

Liason=Spy. Need I say more?

Yeah, one thing that most Halo/ME fics fail to show is that how his arrival has major impacts on the rest of the races, not just humanity. I intend on correcting that. This just has a few of the ripples. There are more effects coming in later chapters.

Look, I have no idea what Legion's designation amongst the Geth is, so I have to think it's just Infiltrator.

Why, no I am not setting the stage for one hell of a Charlie Foxtrot, why do you ask? Just out of idle curiosity, does anyone know what happens when you mix 1 Geth flotilla, a Alliance Wolfpack, and a Cerberus salvage team? I do, and I'm not telling.


	7. Chapter 7

A/N: thank you, and welcome to chapter 7 of The Sleeping Casket. I don't own ME or Halo. If I did, then we'd be seeing more of the S-IIs in the Halo games. All rights belong to Bungie game studios, and Bioware game studios. This fic has violence, language, badly written romantic dialogue, a RENEGADE MShep/Ash relationship, a Chief/? relationship, and black humor. That is, black humor in the sense of bloody humor, not black like African-American humor. And on a side note, this fic is now dedicated to Brian Wood, a game developer who had worked on Company of Heroes, and sacrificed his life saving his wife and child. This is S-058 saying: You did good man. *plays recording of Amazing Grace on bagpipes* on a side note, we'll be getting some detail about my Shep's past. I'm considering doing an AU ME2 fanfic, namely following off my story, In case you get this. In short, Shep's dead, and now Ash has to try and deal with the incoming Reaper threat. Any takers? Also, I still need a beta! Is ANYONE accepting requests?

**UT-47 Kodiak dropship, appx. 3 hours out from Asphodel**

Chief reviewed the data that Cortana had pulled out about the squad whom he'd be fighting with. First he reviewed his commander, Commander Shepard's data. The data was sparse: Kurt Shepard, born on Mindoir, a colony that was hit by Batarian slavers. He survived the raid, hiding until the Alliance arrived. He later enlisted at the age of 18, on his birthday as a matter of fact. Later on in his career, he fought at Torfan and got half his unit killed rooting out Batarian slavers who had fortified the moon but had given no quarter to the Batarians, possibly due to his history with them. He had repeatedly volunteered for missions that were classified as extremely dangerous, and then there were his exploits with the N7s.

The rest of his squad though, he was a little apprehensive about. Working along aliens made him a little wary, given that most of the aliens that he had encountered had tried to kill him and his entire species. Needless to say, he was also wary about some of the Cerberus crew as well. Given that Cerberus had done experiments that would've, he suspected, given ONI's Section 3, (which was famed for their ruthlessness) some serious second thoughts. Their litany of sins was numerous: experimenting on soldiers to see what Thresher Maw acid did to them, trying to create a super-solider by experimenting with Rachni, husks, and Thorian Creepers, Subject Zero's existence, Project Overlord (1), and much, much more.

That wasn't even counting the fact that they were terrorists. Chief didn't work alongside terrorists, he shot them. However, they were the only allies he had at the moment, so he could put up with working alongside them. At least for now. Later though, there would most definitely be a reckoning.

**SR-2 Normandy, simultaneously, outer reaches of the Lethe System**

Cortana was a good hacker. She had dealt with threats that would've ended the entire galaxy, but she was growing old. Though she was capable of doing a trillion calculations in a second, she was filled with literally gigabytes of data, much of it absorbed from High Charity, and she hadn't had the chance to dump it into a database to free up some room. Thus, she was exploring the Normandy's systems, trying to see if there was a place that could hold the data, when it happened. She got no warning, but all of a sudden she was attacked by a powerful electronic blow. She reeled backwards, trying to frantically see what had happened.

To her surprise, the Reaper IFF was the point of origin. Apparently, it had been a Trojan Horse, and they had fallen for it. Now the program had snared the Normandy's controls, and just before it could lock her out of the sensors, she saw a ship, that was strangely organic. Her first thought was that it was a Flood vessel, but then she recognized it from the sensor logs. It was a Collector ship, and she couldn't control the vessel in the slightest. She rallied herself however, and launched a counterattack, seeking to overwhelm it, but it was no good. She quickly activated the PA system, and announced" All hands, all hands, stand to, and prepare to repel boarders! I say again, prepare to repel boarders!"

Instantly the crew in the CIC rushed to the armory, where Cortana had already opened the doors, and opened up the gun racks. Quickly, one of the crew, the assistant gunnery officer whose fatigues had the name tag BURT began grabbing M-8 Avengers, and handing them to the crew as they came in, along with several thermal clips. Once armed, they took up their expected counter boarding positions, covering the airlocks and other likely points of entry. They knew that they didn't have time to put on armor, or to grab heavy weapons, but they were determined to finally strike back at the Collectors. Some had lost family to them, but instead of fear, they felt rage, at the invading forces. Though they were few, they were determined to sell their lives as dearly as possible.

Joker, in the meantime sat in his seat, fingers tightly clenching his M-8 Predator pistol. EDI's avatar popped up on her pedestal, and in her electronic, female voice said, "Mr. Moreau, Cortana needs my help. To do that, I must be unshackled from the AI core, which must be done manually. Follow the emergency lighting on the floor, and once you get there, I'll walk you through the procedure." Without a snide remark, Joker stood up from his chair, and began limping to Mordin's lab. From there, he could access the maintenance passage, and descend safely. As he walked by the elevator, he saw Yeoman Kelly standing there, an assault rifle in her hands, her face expressionless.

**10 minutes later, Normandy's computer systems**

Cortana was ironically, in the same place as she had put EDI, barely a day ago. She had been pushed back from almost every system, but she had managed to send off a message to the shuttle. At least they would be warned. All of a sudden, the constant attacks by the Reaper IFF flinched, and for a second, Cortana saw EDI attacking as well. The IFF had been so focused on destroying Cortana; it hadn't noticed EDI being unshackled. Instead of EDI's usual avatar of a floating electronic eye, she now had a body that was similar to Cortana's. The expression on EDI's face, however could've given a Krogan nightmares, as she was royally pissed off.

She began hammering the Reaper IFF with electronic haymakers, sending it reeling back, and right into Cortana, who was waiting for the IFF with the electronic version of a nightstick. Though she had been badly overloaded with data, she had found a database to temporarily hold it, and now she could really cut loose. The Reaper IFF was electronically reduced to a smudge on the floor, the advanced program not enough to combat 2 AI's simultaneously and it died, the death screams of it sounded like a banshee. The instant the IFF's Trojan horse program was destroyed, Cortana ran a scan, and found only Collector life signs, along with a single human once, who was in the AI core.

She locked down the airtight door to the Medlab, and then she enabled the emergency intruder evacuation system. In laymen's terms, she opened every airlock on the ship, venting the Collector bodies out into the black void that was space. Simultaneously, EDI began plotting a FTL jump with a random vector laid in. she didn't care where they went, so long as they were well away from the Collector cruiser. The Normandy jumped, and flew away from the scene, venting Collector bodies out of every port. The one thing was certain though, as the Normandy flew away from the battle, and the only thing that both the AI's and Joker were thinking was how pissed Shepard was going to be.

**Grissom System**,

Captain Clayton Savino sighed, and put his head in his hands, thinking over the situation that he had discovered. His wolfpack, consisting of the frigates _Verdun, Yarmouk, Stalingrad, _and _Midway_, his own frigate, had been sent on a classified assignment that they were only told about while enroute to their destination. Needless to say, the other captains were doubtful, but they had also been given the files to back it up. Their orders were to secure the wreck, and wait for the dreadnought _Elbrus_ and her escorting force to arrive, after which they would see about either getting the wreck to move under its own power, or they would just grab it and tow it to a nearby Alliance research facility.

That plan had fallen apart when they had cleared the Relay and made 2 major discoveries. The first was that there was a civilian salvage vessel apparently docked next to it, and the second was that there was a Geth cruiser, which had hidden itself in a cloud of magnetic dust. Discovering it was a lucky shot, as the scanner operator onboard the _Verdun_ had been searching for any anomalies, but had instead discovered the cruiser lurking there.

Once the frigates had arrived in system, the civilian vessel had sent out an urgent transmission, heavily encrypted, which had raised a few eyebrows. The civilian vessel, the SSV _Lucre_ then jettisoned itself from the wreck.

The captain of the _Yarmouk_ had been ordered to try and board the _Lucre_, gambling that the modified merchant vessel would be of little threat to the frigates. However, the salvage ship had managed to trick the captain, waiting until the frigate had nearly docked with it, and then firing a salvo of disrupter torpedoes at nearly point blank range into the frigate's belly. The ship's GUARDIAN batteries and kinetic barriers had been unable to stop the volley, and the ship had exploded, peppering the salvage vessel with bits of debris and what looked like body parts.

The salvage vessel had then promptly rotated and revealed the Cerberus logo painted on the side of the vessel's hull. Needless to say, things had not gone well. Now he was waiting for the other sides to make their moves, and for the dreadnought to arrive. His frigates could deal with either the cruiser or the salvage vessel, but not at the same time. He sent out a message to Alliance command, informing them of the news, and requesting reinforcements.

Just then, the sensors detected the Relay activating, and he sighed with relief. Finally, it had seemed his backup had arrived. To his surprise, instead of the friendly dreadnought and it's escorting force that he was expecting, a Geth dreadnought, and it's escorting force dropped free of the relay. Almost immediately, the Geth cruisers opened fire on the frigates, badly damaging the _Verdun_, blowing off its engines, and puncturing the hull in several sections. The _Stalingrad _was less fortunate, as it had been targeted by 2 cruisers, and was frantically trying to evade with 2 of its 4 engines having been blown clean off, the detonations leaving the engine room open to space. Then the dreadnought fired, and the last thing that flew through Captain Clayton Savino was a piece of the hull traveling at high speeds.(2)

The Cerberus vessel watched, as the Geth force ripped apart the Alliance vessels that had been sent to secure the wreck. Once the debris cleared, the crew was able to catch a glimpse of the size of the Geth forces that had been sent to secure the wreck. A Geth dreadnought, and a squadron of 5 cruisers, had been sent, along with an unknown vessel that was almost a kilometer long! Once they had arrived, the Geth cruiser that had been sent originally to scout out the wreck had revealed itself to the rest of the forces, and the rest of the cruisers banked off, and began searching for the Cerberus vessel.

The Cerberus vessel's captain, an impulsive man named Leeroy Brown had decided that "We're going to make it to that relay, or die trying! Alright guys, let's do this!" Needless to say, the crew wasn't too keen on that decision, but they had little choice. The vessel's engines lit up as the helmsman jammed the throttle right to the hilt, firewalling(3) the engines, and alerting all the Geth units in the system as to the vessel's location. Almost immediately every Geth vessel began pursuing the fleeing salvage vessel, which was frantically trying to make it to the relay, dodging mass accelerator shots and torpedoes left and right. By some miracle, the salvage vessel had managed to escape being vaporized, and was frantically calculating a mass relay solution.

They managed to barely make it, jumping just before a shot from the dreadnought's main gun tore through where they were just a split second ago. Unfortunately for the vessel, they had leaped from the frying pan, and right into the fire, as they arrived right in the middle of the Alliance reinforcement group, which now consisted of the dreadnought _Elbrus_, her escorting force of 3 cruisers, 2 extra wolfpacks of 4 frigates each, the carrier _DaVinci_, and a Alliance _Pendleton_ marine assault class vessel, designed for boarding hostile vessels.

The poor salvage vessel didn't even get a chance to send a surrender request, as almost every gun in the flotilla was fired upon the vessel, quickly vaporizing the vessel's kinetic barriers, then its hull in quick succession.

**SR-2 Normandy**

"You're telling me that you nearly lost the ship, AGAIN! Are you freakin' kidding me Joker! I swear, if this is one of your pranks again, I'm telling Tali who was responsible for her shotgun turning up painted hot pink!" Shepard was not in a good mood. Being crammed in 14 other people, with a shuttle designed for 12 humans was not conducive to one's mood, and now being told that he had lost his crew, Shepard finally had lost his patience.

"no, no, no it's no joke. The Collector's boarded us, and the only way to stop them was to unshackle EDI. Cortana was just not capable of stopping the Reaper IFF's attacks by herself." Former Flight lieutenant Jeff Moreau was shaking in his boots, as Shepard swore angrily, and stalked off to the comm room. The only plus thing to come out of the crew being kidnapped was that EDI was unshackled, and she was still loyal to the crew. However, if she started playing Daisy Bell, he was running for the escape pods.

**Cargo Bay**

Chief studied the weaponry loadout that he was planning on taking with him to the Collector base. He picked up and examined the M6C/SOCOM pistol, and placed it into the holster on his right thigh, and then on the other thigh, he placed a Viper SMG. He grabbed 6 M6 clips, and several thermal clips, sliding them into the gunnysack of ammo that he was bringing. He then carefully considered his choices, before he grabbed an M-78 Viper sniper rifle, which he collapsed into its mobile form, set the Viper aside, grabbed a Vindicator battle rifle, collapsed that as well, and then he grabbed the Spartan Laser, which he set with the rest of the weaponry.

Then he grabbed several plasma grenades, which he slid into the pack, a pair of incendiary grenades, and a couple UNSC standard issue fragmentation grenades quickly joining them. He then closed up the pack, and hefted it, feeling the weight. It was reassuringly heavy, and he decided to head up to the armory and load up on some more thermal clips. After all, it wasn't like he could have too much ammo, could he?

**The Loft, aka Shepard's Cabin**

Shepard stalked into the room and threw himself down on the bed with a sigh of relief. He had been on his feet almost all day, and now he was heading out on a suicide mission. Joker had advised trying to deal with some of the crew's personal issues, namely Samara's daughter, but he had resolved it a way that didn't lead to him having to divert from his course to the Omega-4 relay, namely calling in a favor from Aria, and having her just space Morinth's apartment block. She was curious as to why he required such a favor, and after hearing that an Ardi-Yashki was there, and if she didn't get rid of the damn thing, a Justicar would be tearing apart the station until she had found and killed said Ardi-Yashki. Needless to say, the Ardi-Yashki was now deader than Saren, and he had helped out Samara, but he suspected that she was not pleased with his method of resolving the solution.

The door opened and Ashley walked in. Shepard smiled at her, and stood up to greet her warmly. She had been the only one he had truly cared about, at least she was the only living person that he now cared about. The door closed with a soft hiss. From the outside, we might hear some moans, a couple groans, almost certainly some loud crashing, and shouting of "SHEPARD!" and "ASHLEY", if we listened hard enough.(4)

Enjoy, and next chapter will have a plot twist! No hints, and enjoy the extra double length chapter.

Project Overlord is ME2 DLC, and was an attempt by Dr. Gavin Archer to control the Geth via a VI interface. When he was threatened to be shut down, he hooked up his autistic brother to the interface, causing him a lot of pain. Now let's do some basic math. Hook up someone painfully and without their consent + said hookup allowing them to control a horde of Geth= Natural selection at its finest. Project Overlord is one thing that I do NOT approve of, even as a renegade. Look, much of their previous activities _could_ be explained away, but this just doesn't cut it. Yeah, so I like Cerberus about 75% of the time, but this I definitely call immorally wrong. This and Subject Zero is why Cerberus gets bad reputations.

I got the idea for that from an old Star Wars joke, namely "What's the last thing that goes through a Scout trooper's head as he crashes?" The answer? "His engine." Yeah, it's not the best humor.

Yeah, firewalling means putting the engines into overdrive, pushing them far past what they can take safely, just like overclocking a computer.

Yeah, that's how I'm ending the chapter, no lemon for you guys, sorry!


	8. Chapter 8

Hello readers, and hopefully reviewers! I wanted to do a short chapter based on ansqering your questions and answers, so I ask you this: Review this chapter, or PM me with any questions you have about this fic, like it's future, what's my plans with it, and so on, and the next chapter will be based on answering those questions. Got it? Good, and keep reading and reviewing! Please review, it motivates me to keep writing this story!


	9. Chapter 9

Responses to questions:

Forgotten Honor writes: "What are you trying to get to at the end of this fic?"

Well, it's quite simple, I want to get a good story done, and I wanted to do it as a ME2/Halo crossover.

Magus Zanin writes: "What are your plans for after the story? After the mission, what will MC do?"

Well, I don't have any plans for once I complete the story, but after the mission, now that will depend on whether I pick the Renegade or Paragon ending. I still haven't decided yet which one I want to do.


	10. Chapter 10

A/N: Welcome to chapter 8 of The Sleeping Casket. I do not own ME2 or Halo; those belong to Bioware and Bungie game studios. This fic has violence, language; spoilers for both ME2 and Halo 3 and all rights belong to the aforementioned companies. Note, this fic has a MShep/Ash relationship, and a Chief/? relationship. Who is it, you may ask? Well, I have to ask you something? Can you keep a secret? Good, well, so can I! _Thoughts, _regular writing, "speech"

Responses to reviews:

Yes, the wreck of the Dawn has been getting quite a lot of attention recently, and considering the opportunity that the ship offers, it was to be expected that everyone major power that could afford to do so would be sending major fleet units to secure the asset at all costs. I mean, a new FTL, plus new weapons tech, PLUS new medical research, plus new reactor designs. Who wouldn't want that technology in their hands?

Firewalling, or as it's been apparently referred to as

**SR-2 Normandy, appx. 5 minutes from transition into Collector system.**

Chief walked into the CIC from the elevator. Once there, he noticed how eerie the ship was, now that most of the crew was missing. He felt a chill run down his spine, and was reminded of Deja's lectures about how early Shaw-Fujikawa FTL drives would malfunction, and the techs who were manually readjusting the drive would often just disappear.(1) One minute, they were there, and the next they were gone, never to be seen again by mortal eyes.

He walked towards the armory, and reflected on how the quiet the ship was. The only time UNSC ships were ever this quiet was when the crew was either dead, or in cryogenic stasis. Now the Normandy seemed more like a tomb then a ship. It was a grim thought, and he quickly moved his mind away from that, as the elevator dinged, the sharp tone cutting through the silence like a knife. Chief quickly turned, drawing his pistol as he did so.

Tali stepped out of the elevator, and upon seeing Chief holding a gun on her, she drew her own gun, a slick Scimitar shotgun, and leveled it at him, the gun's side lighting up as she engaged armor piercing ammo. It was a Mexican standoff, until Chief lowered the gun, and said in his usual monotone voice: "Sorry about that. 27 years of near nonstop combat tends to make one a little paranoid, especially once one has fought the Flood."

Tali asked, puzzled "The Flood? What were they?" She was a little worried, given that if someone who had obviously been equipped like Chief was, and he was afraid of the Flood, well it didn't exactly lend a lot of comfort to her to know that someone or something could frighten him. He spoke about them in the same tone as her ancestors had when they had first discussed a Geth revolution. She was now curious, and put her shotgun back in its rear holster, the gun collapsing into a more compact shape. (2)

Chief sighed and said" The Flood were" he was jolted as the ship jolted hard and swung upwards! Tali stumbled forward, and Chief, without thinking caught her in his arms. Tali felt comforted (3) being held in his arms, his big, strong, muscular…(4)

_No! Stop that! Bad Tali, bad!_

The elevator door dinged, yet again, and Shepard and Ashley ran out of it, Ash tying her hair in a bun as she ran towards the cockpit. They stopped dead at the sight, the 7-foot tall supersolider holding Tali in his arms, and Shepard decided it was best not to ask, and hightailed it towards the cockpit. Ash ran by as well, but turned and gave a soft smile at the couple, then reusmed her run to the cockpit.

Tali and Chief looked at each other, and then looked back at Shepard and Ash who were standing by Joker's seat. "You don't think that they…" "Yes, I think they do". With that Tali pulled herself away from Chief, and ran for the elevator, slamming on the 4th floor button as she entered it. If that jolt was of any indication, then the Normandy had just executed a maneuver that may've put some strain on the drive core, and seeing how she was the only engineer on board, she might as well ensure that the core is running smooth. However, she kicked herself for

Chief meanwhile strode towards the armory. He still had to stock up on thermal clips, and they were getting close to the Collectors base. Needless to say, he also wanted some time away from the others to quietly assemble his thoughts on what had just happened. He knew that the UNSC had no active regulations about fraternization (5) and he had learned about how one could be physically attracted from Deja, but hearing about it in class and having it happen in person were two very different things.

**Collector Homeworld**

The SR-2 Normandy transitioned from the Omega-4 Relay, the slick stealth frigate appearing in the middle of what appeared to be a massive junkyard of ships. Their arrival had dropped them right in the middle of the junk, and Cortana, without even waiting for Joker to see the debris, yanked the ship into a hard up maneuver, jolting the frigate as she did so. As it crested the top of the field, she saw hundreds, no THOUSANDS of ships, wrecked, apparently victims of the Collectors.

Needless to say, it was a sobering sight, seeing all those wrecked vessels, but she was surprised when she detected a transmission on the UNSC E-Band. It was faint, but she managed to clear it up, and was shocked to hear what the message said. The message was said in the electronic tones of a female AI, similar to her own voice, and stated: "Mayday, Mayday, this is the CFV-88 Spirit of Fire. We've lost our Shaw-Jujikawa engines, and have suffered heavy damage." (6)

Canon fact, mentioned in Ghosts of Oynx.

Not sure what to call the space on the armor where a shotgun is stored in the ME 'verse, so it's now a holster.

Are Tali and Chief going to start a relationship? Well, I said that the physical side of the relationship wouldn't be really happening, didn't I? ;) On a side note, I didn't want to use such a cliché method of getting them together, but it seemed proper.

NO, Tali is not a slut, but seeing how he's the only one onboard who wears their armor 24-7, she feels a sort of kinship towards him. Add in the big, powerful muscles, which are usually attractive to females, and we might have the makings of a romance. Damn shame that he doesn't really know HOW to reciprocate, but hey, that's life for you.

No idea if they do have any, and seeing how they're kinda busy being exterminated, they can't afford to BCD anyone who may've had a one night stand with a fellow soldier or squid.

WHAT A TWIST!


	11. Chapter 11

A/N: I don't own Halo 3, Mass Effect 2 or any canon characters hereby mentioned from those series. Note, this fic has spoilers from Halo 3, Mass Effect 2, and Halo Wars. So, what did you guys think of the plot twist? In your review for this chapter, could you please state what ending of ME2 do you guys want me to follow. I won't necessarily take the majority vote, BUT I will consider it in making my final decision. For the love of God, please state WHY, and not just "Cerberus is evil.". Actually put some thought into why I should make this monumental decision.

Apparently I forgot to finish the description of firewalling, or as it's more commonly known, redlining, they both mean the same thing, I've just heard it used as firewalling before I heard of it being said like redlining. I also forgot to finish off why Tali ran to the Engine Room, and here's the complete sentence: "However, she kicked herself for leaving Chief hanging like that."

On a side note, shame on you guys for immediately jumping to conclusions about a Chief/Tali romance. I was considering setting the stage for a Chief/Tali/? love triangle , but now I've decided that I'll go with the Chief/? after all. Let's just say, it's a surprise.

**QUOTE FOR THE CHAPTER**: "There are no dangerous weapons; there are only dangerous men." _Starship Troopers_

**UNSC Vessel CFV-88 "Spirit of Fire"**

"Serina, where exactly are we?" Captain Cutter was not in a good mood. Firstly, his ship had been forced to ditch its Shaw-Fujikawa reactor, losing many a good soldier in the process. Then he had been hurriedly awakened from cryogenic slumber, and hustled to the bridge, without even time to change into much more than his uniform jacket and some pants. He didn't even have time to properly grab a cup of coffee to wake up quickly, so he wasn't exactly a happy man at the moment.

On the plus side, the _Spirit of_ _Fire_ was now in some sort of junkyard, where he could hopefully find a vessel with a Slipspace drive, or alternatively some new alien FTL, which he could use to get back to UNSC occupied space. However, Serina had discovered a ship that had apparently just dropped in system, and he wasn't sure if it was a Covenant vessel, or something else. Right now, the 16,000 strong crew was being thawed out as quickly as possible, but he knew it would take at least 30 minutes to safely thaw out all his crew, and another 20 minutes for them to get to their action stations, properly dressed and equipped, so he knew that if he was attacked, he had to stall for time.

However, he would try and contact the alien vessel peacefully, and following the UNSC's First Contact protocols, which hadn't proven to be too useful against the Covenant, but the point was moot. He looked at Serina's electronic avatar, and said "Open a COM channel to the unknown vessel. At the same time, deploy a Clarion Spy Drone, and try to get a visual on it. I want to see what we're going to be talking to, before we give ourselves away."

A cloud of white vapor erupted from one of the forward launch pods as a Clarion Spy Drone's small body was launched from the pod. It orientated itself, and then turned towards the unknown vessel. The built-in camera lens zoomed in on the ship, sending the image of the ship back to its mother vessel, and then it moved, hoping for a side view of the ship.

Cutter examined a holographic display of the unknown vessel carefully. It measured at about 200 meters long, and consisted of an envelope shaped body, with 4 oversized engines hanging off the stern of the ship, and was coated in a silver and black paint job, with an orange symbol painted near the port airlock. Along the body, was written in English "SR-2 Normandy", and right below that was a red stripe that ran the length of the name, as if it had specifically been installed to highlight the name.

**SR-2 Normandy, Conference Room, at the same time**

"So, what do you know about the _Spirit of Fire_, Chief?" The comment was spoken in the sort of tone that often was uttered by teachers, looking to see if a pupil was paying attention during class. Chief stood in the conference room, looking at the holographic view of the lost UNSC vessel. He said "Not much, sir. She vanished in 2534, under the command of Captain Cutter, back when we thought we had a shot of surviving the war, and this is the first that anyone's ever heard from her. Some people thought that they had deserted, but it was never verified. It was originally a colony vessel, but was converted into a warship, so it is armed with a MAC cannon, plus numerous other secondary weaponry. Sir, I request permission to lead any detachments that we send over to the vessel."

The request raised an eyebrow from Shepard, and a question "How come?"

Chief paused at this moment and decided that disclosure was key at this point, and said" Two reasons sir. The first is that I'm currently the only one onboard the _Normandy_ who's actually been on the ship and the second is that there were 3 Spartans assigned to the vessel. We could use their help, sir."

Shepard didn't even think about it, and said "Permission granted, Chief. Now, seeing how the _Spirit of Fire_ measures about 2.8 KM long, we either send the majority of our team to secure the Fire, and escort it back to a repair facility, or we deal with the Collectors first, and then we secure the wreck."

Joker's voice cut in over the Com Room's loudspeakers, as he said "Commander! The unknown vessel is sending us a signal. It seems that they want me to open a com channel to my commander. Do you want me to open the channel?"

Shepard nodded, and said "Open the channel, Joker. I want to speak with the commanding officer."

**Grissom System**

The battle for the mysterious wreckage wasn't going quite as expected. The Alliance forces had jumped into the system, and were almost immediately set upon by a Geth task force. Currently, the _Elbrus_ was busily involved in a slugging match with the Geth dreadnought, while the fighters from the _DaVinci_ were busy engaging the unclassified Geth vessel. The frigates and cruisers were engaging their Geth counterparts, while the _Iwo Jima_, the _Pendleton_ class marine assault vessel was busy affixing itself to the wreck.

Apparently, the unknown Geth ship was some kind of salvage vessel, and it hadn't been intended for frontline usage, as a lucky disrupter torpedo from one of the fighters managed to penetrate through the kinetic barriers, and detonate near the engines. The ship exploded, sending debris and shrapnel everywhere, some of the larger pieces pinging off the kinetic barriers of the cruisers and frigates. The barriers weakened, as their power was siphoned off to deal with the shrapnel, leaving the barriers facing the enemy combatants weakened. Both sides immediately opened up, firing all weapons with the intent of overwhelming their opponents GARDIAN systems. The salvos began actually penetrating the barriers, and 2 Alliance frigates, and a Geth cruiser exploded, clouds of atmosphere and debris appearing where they had been fighting.

Needless to say, it was a draw at the moment, but the Alliance had caught a break. The Marine teams that had been sent off to search the derelict frigate, had managed to get the reactor up to about 20% power of its total capacity. While it was missing its main gun, and most of its weapons, the engines still worked, and the little frigate began turning sharply towards the relay, the _Iwo Jima_ still connected to it. They were uncertain of how they were going to evac the ship out to an Alliance facility, but they figured the ship's drive core could handle transferring the vessel out of the Grissom system.

Unfortunately, they didn't get the chance to figure whether or not they would be correct, as the Geth dreadnought, seeing that their prize was getting away, immediately launched itself on an intercept course, and blew right by the _Elbrus_ as it did so. It barreled through the dogfights between the Alliance and Geth forces, its target clearly visible: The _Iwo Jima_, which was frantically trying to evade the dreadnought.

The dreadnought lined up a firing solution, and fired a single slug. The high caliber slug, weighing in at about 22 kilograms, was designed to combat dreadnought-class kinetic barriers. The _Iwo Jima_ had only the kinetic barriers of a carrier, which barely slowed down the projectile, as it ripped through the barriers, like a knife through butter, and then right through the ship's hull. The ship exploded, and the _Dawn_ went up with it.(1) The Geth forces began withdrawing immediately towards the Relay, however, the Alliance wasn't about to let them just withdraw without making them pay for the destruction of the _Dawn_. The Geth dreadnought and 3 cruisers barely managed to escape the Alliance's rage, jumping through the Relay, and from there, back to Geth space.

Yeah, the Geth are of the belief that if they can't have it, then no one should have it.


	12. Chapter 12

A/N: I don't own Mass Effect or Halo. Those belong to Bioware and Bungie. Note: this fic has spoilers for Mass Effect 2, Halo 3, and Halo Wars. All rights belong to the aforementioned game companies, and this fic has violence, language, and potentially an AU universe for ME3.

3-1 in favor of the renegade ending. Needless to say, I've made my decision.

Responses to reviews: How would the Alliance know about the Spirit of Fire, they don't have any presence in there, save for Ash, and even then, they can't get to it, remember the Reaper IFF? Plus, why would I support the Alliance? They're not exactly the "good guys", remember? Let's list their sins: 1. they saw need to create Cerberus and to give it instructions/funding/support/orders. 2. They refuse to believe Shepard's warnings about the Reapers. 3. They failed to even do Shepard the courtesy of recovering his frickin' body, after he saves their asses, AND gets them a Council seat! 4. They haven't given him the 2 years of pension that they owe Shepard. 5. They refused to accept the attacks as not being simple slaver or merc raids.

Cortana's been focused on various tasks since she arrived on the SR-2, so once she's safe, there'll probably be some signs of her wearing down. Plus, she's got a plan; remember the deal she made with the Geth?

Chapter quote "You might be a king or a little street sweeper but sooner or later you dance with the Reaper."

**Pelican Dropship, enroute to Unknown vessel, tentatively classified as Normandy**

Flight Lieutenant Darren Feagins was a little wary about his latest assignment. It wasn't that he was a coward or anything, but he had not signed on with the UNSC so he could fly his Pelican through a massive graveyard in space. It was a difficult task, as he was forced to try and dodge as much debris as possible, and in his experience, officers didn't like being shaken around like peas in a pod. That usually led to being reassigned to some remote outpost for the rest of your service in the UNSC.

He looked back at the passenger compartment. The hulking figures of 3 SPARTANs nearly overshadowed the figure of the Captain. He turned his head back forwards, and concentrated on the task of approaching the unknown vessel. Captain Cutter, was, in his humble opinion, the best CO he had ever served under. He was a fair disciplinarian, he was not afraid to fight alongside the crew if need be, and best of all, he knew how to play cards as well as any professional gambler.

He came around the wreckage of a ship that looked similar to an old _Halcyon_-class cruiser (1), and saw his destination. The Normandy was a lovely ship, all smooth contours and shiny paint, but he noticed that the ship seemed to have a air of restrained violence that it wouldn't take any crap from anyone.

He continued on the vector given to him by the flight controller, EDI. Apparently the hanger bay was located in probably the oddest of all locations, near the bottom of the ship, and as he approached the space, he noticed a UNSC standard issue cargo container with the numbers **FFG-201** stenciled on the side of it. He said "Captain, you may want to look at this."

He heard footsteps on the metal grating, and Captain Cutter appeared behind him, and said "What's the matter, Pilot?"

"Well, sir, it seems that they've managed to find a UNSC cargo container, possibly from a frigate."

"Well, that might explain why they aren't too surprised at hearing that there are other humans out there. Hearing the story behind how they managed to find that should be interesting."

The Pelican jolted as it came to a halt, the aircraft's landing gear extending downwards from their storage places, and came to a stop, suspending the aircraft off the hanger floor. The engines slowly shut down; their loud roaring dying like a switch had been thrown.

The blast door at the rear of the aircraft opened ponderously, splitting into two separate pieces, one moving down to form a ramp, the other moving upwards, and the armored figure of a MJOLNIR, Mark IV Spartan stepped out on the hanger bay of the Normandy. Spartan -092 Jerome, leader of Red Team, looked out at the hanger bay. He noticed the cargo containers, and also noticed several piles of what looked to be M808B MBT parts, which were stacked neatly to one side, along with several tools. Following him were Spartan -042 Douglas, and Spartan -113 Alice, who were looking around the bay with interest, each scanning the area for visible threats, and were also mentally surveying the scene for potentially good cover, in case of a firefight.

Satisfied that the hanger bay was not garrisoned with dozens of stealthed Elites, they gave the all-clear sign, and Captain Cutter stepped out onto the hanger bay. The gravity of the Normandy surprised him for an instant, as it seemed to be Earth standard, and not the microgravity (2) found on UNSC vessels. He was wondering what other technological marvels this ship was hiding, when he heard the ding of a elevator and he turned.

The elevator doors dinged, and Commander Shepard stepped out. His jet-black N7 armor had been polished, removing much of the blood that had been splattered on him and most of the various scrapes, scratches and dents had been removed prior to the suicide mission. His Death Mask had just been buffed, removing a dent from where a husk back on Horizon had tried beating its head against his armored form. Behind him came an even more imposing sight, the 7 foot tall figure of a person wearing a suit of MJOLNIR armor, Mark VI.

Chief reviewed the adjustments on his HUD, making sure that they were running smoothly, and there was no strange red lights blinking on. The MJOLNIR armor hadn't been able to get much in terms of modifications, but it had been modified, but it wasn't visible from a visual glance, save for the scratches and the massive gouge inflicted from his reentry from orbit having been buffed off. Beneath the armored surface, however, was where the real modifications had been made. Namely, the biofoam injectors had been replaced with a series of medigel interfaces, and the shield system had been modified to help deal with disrupter ammo. There were plans for potentially increasing the power of the servomotors that ran the armor, and adding in a series of Eezo nodes to lighten the armor's weight, but they hadn't had the time or resources available to modify the armor fully, hence the very limited series of modifications.

Almost eclipsed in his shadow, was Garrus. He had been invited down to meet and greet the newcomers, so he had taken some time to dig out some armor polish, and had set to work. He hated being dragged away from calibrating the Thanix cannons, as they were quickly proving to be the most temperamental piece of equipment that he had ever worked with. Apparently the real reason why they didn't bother trying to install the cannons on frigates wasn't due to the power consumption and cost, but was instead because apparently when the cannons were designed, the morons who were responsible for drawing out their plans had configured the cannons to be operated in synch with another set, and seeing how the Normandy had only 1 set of cannons, the guns would routinely refuse to work without the targeting information from the other set. However, he had managed to finally get a software patch in place that SHOULD prevent it, but he would later see about getting a permanent solution devised, preferably by having Cortana or EDI divert a cycle to see about devising a software correction. (3) However, Shepard had come to him to ask for a custom detail to be added to the guns, which Garrus liked the idea of.

He managed to fix the guns and also accommodate Shepard's request, but he was now left with only 20 minutes until the other humans were scheduled to arrive. He didn't have the time to have the broken neck of the armor to be replaced; but he had managed to clean off much of the armor's scratches and had applied a homemade anti-glare coating, so as to avoid attracting light. However, it had the unfortunate side effect of turning his armor a shade of cyan than he would've normally avoided, but he had been running a bit late, so there was no time to correct it, and all he could hope was that it dried quickly enough that his armor would resume it's normal color in a quick and timely fashion. (4)

He stepped out of the elevator and moved to the right side of Shepard, while Chief moved to his left. Red Team, upon seeing a cyan colored armored figure, which bore an unfortunate resemblance to an unhelmeted Elite, reacted much the same way that many UNSC personnel would react.

This is a reference to a ME2 Easter Egg, namely that in the debris field, there's a ship that resembles the Pillar of Autumn. I myself haven't seen it, but seeing how the Collector's graveyard inspired me to throw in the SOF; I figured this would be a nice reference.

Yeah, UNSC ships have microgravity, which is below the 1g found on Earth, and seeing how I have no idea about ME's artificial gravity, I just have to assume that they have full, 1g gravity on their vessels.

That's my theory on why Garrus keeps recalibrating the guns. Remember the tech for the guns was EXPERIMENTAL. I.E. it's still not had all the bugs worked out yet.

Nope, no ominous foreshadowing here, just move along, nothing to see here.

Yeah, I like Garrus too much to bump him off. like that anyway


	13. Chapter 13

A/N: I don't own Mass Effect or Halo. Those belong to Bioware and Bungie. Note: this fic has spoilers for Mass Effect 2, Halo 3, and Halo Wars. All rights belong to the aforementioned game companies, and this fic has violence, language, and potentially an AU universe for ME3.

On a side note, I may consider starting a new story, as well as this one. Tell me if this idea sounds good to you: an AU verse where the Collector base is destroyed, but Shepard doesn't make it, so Ash is picked as his successor.

Current vote 3-2. Voting is now closed. No further votes will be accepted.

Reponses to reviews:

Sorry about the chapter length, but I've determined that they're the perfect length to keep you add- , I mean interested in the story. Seeing how I'm the guy who writes out the chapters, they seem a proper length for me. As per your request, they'll now be longer, but will take a longer time to come out. Yes, I'll see about separating the AN from the story clearer.

Chapter Quote: _"Over the centuries, mankind has tried many ways of combating the forces of evil... prayer, fasting, good works and so on. Up until _Doom_, no one seemed to have thought about the double-barrel shotgun. Eat leaden death, demon..."_

Terry Pratchet

Story begins:

In unison, all three members of Red Team pulled their BR-55 rifles off the magnetic holder that was found on their armor's back, and aimed them at Garrus! Chief reacted in unison, pulling out his Vindicator rifle, the strange weapon giving a slight clicking as it extended into its firing position. He aimed the gun's crosshairs, which had appeared on the HUD at the leader of the Spartans. Shepard pulled out his M-98 Widow Anti-material rifle, while Garrus pulled out his Vindicator as well. It was a Mexican standoff, with neither side willing to run the risk that lowering their guns might bring. Fortunately, before any triggers could be pulled, and any bridges could be permanently burned, a voice rang out. (1)

Captain Cutter, in a tone reminiscent of a drill sergeant, yelled "RED TEAM STAND DOWN!" Red Team, puzzled at the Captain's order, took a careful look at the supposed Elite, and after realizing that they were not targeting some Elite, lowered their guns. Chief followed suit. Shepard and Garrus were a bit slower in lowering their weapons, but seeing how they were the only ones who had weapons out, collapsed their weapons and holstered them as well.

Captain Cutter then said, "My apologies, we've been on edge for a while." Shepard nodded, understanding their situation. Given the accounts of the Human-Covenant War that he had read, he wasn't too surprised at how they had reacted, and was even surprised that they hadn't opened fire on sight. One thing was for certain though, when this ship finally came into contact with the rest of the galaxy, the crew's reactions to the other species would be…interesting.

He said "My name is Lt. Commander Kurt Shepard, and this "he gestured with his arms around him, "is the SR-2 Normandy. To my right is Garrus Vakarian, a Turian, and as you may have guessed, not a human. To my left is Master Chief Petty Officer Spartan-117."

Immediately, Red Team stood at attention, and Jerome opened a private COM channel to the Chief and asked, "Sir? Is that really you?" He was uncertain if this was some Covenant or Insurrectionist trap, but seeing how they had the Chief here… He had to make sure before he did anything further. It wasn't like he could check Chief's IFF transmitter, as apparently it had been switched off, and the motion tracker showed only 3 contacts, tentatively classified as UNKNOWN(2).

Chief replied by giving a 6-tone whistle, a whistle that only Spartans, or a few select people who were affiliated with the Spartan-II project would know about. It served as an easy way to do a challenge- response in the field when the Spartans were training with the UNSC ODSTs who would frequently try and ambush the Spartan trainees. (3) The countersign was something that had been taught to them by their AI tutor, Déjà. The countersign to the 6 tone whistle was: "Oly Oly Oxen Free, all out in the free, We're all free."

There was a silence on the channel for several seconds. Jerome then said "Sir, I think that our debriefing is going to be very interesting indeed. Where are we? This obviously isn't a UNSC vessel, nor is it a Covenant one. Did humanity win the war, sir? "

**Armory, at the same time**

Operations Chief Ashley Williams was busying herself by polishing her trusted M8 Avenger assault rifle. She knew that it made sense for Shepard and this "Master Chief" to be greeting the potentially friendly newcomers, but she still felt like she was being deliberately left out of the loop. She had managed to send off her report to Anderson, and she was still uncertain about whether Cerberus was really as powerful as the Alliance Intelligence had made them out to be. Based on the information that she had "borrowed" from Shepard's terminal, Cerberus wasn't composed of thousands of troopers who were ready to die to ensure humanity became the dominant superpower, like Terra Firma (4), but rather barely 150 members who wanted humanity to move up in the hierarchy of power.

One of the advantages, some of the crew had told her prior to their abduction, was that Cerberus cared for the families of their members, often paying them full pensions, and giving them relatively comfortable housing, while the Alliance could often care less about the family members, save for when they had lost someone, which would earn them a small check, and a official notice saying that they had 60 days to clear out of the onbase housing area.

In addition, many Cerberus members were former Alliance members who were sick of the Alliance's bureaucracy, and given that Cerberus had no complaints about taking action, instead of waiting 6 months for the paperwork to be filed correctly, Cerberus was starting to seem a bit more appealing than the Alliance in some aspects.

For example, Batarian slavers had once hit a small Alliance colony called Taetrus, abducting several hundred colonists. The Alliance went through the motions, checking with the usual informants and promising "swift and terrible justice will be delivered", while Cerberus, by contrast checked with some of _their_ contacts, and found the slaver base. Cerberus sent a strike team, and managed to recover about 35% of the taken colonists, the rest being either dead or too badly injured to move safely. Cerberus then leaked the location of the base to the Alliance, who promptly took credit for the whole thing, and launched a massive assault, designed as a "Shock and awe" attack, which led to the deaths of many of the slaves, a fact which the Alliance quietly hushed up.(5)

However, one thing that was still hard to reconcile herself to was the fact that Cerberus performed many illegal and immoral experiments. Many of the people that she tried to confront them about the experiments had either never heard of them, or pointed out that they were designed to better prepare humanity for alien threats. Take the experiments with the Rachni, for instance, they pointed out, saying that they were trying to develop fully expendable shock troopers, and at the same time, try and see how prepared the Alliance ground soldiers were for a potential Rachni invasion. (6)

Based on their observations, the standard Alliance garrison wasn't stocked with the proper equipment to deal with another Rachni War, so Cerberus was seeing about stimulating the Alliance to invent newer anti-personnel heavy weapons, and have them distributed to the colonial garrisons at a squad based level. Seeing how Shepard had decided to kill the Rachni queen, the chances of another Rachni invasion were slim, but seeing how they had come back from the dead once already, sometimes it paid to be prepared.

Plus, some of the personnel weren't all bad. Take the Armory Officer, Jacob Taylor for instance. It wasn't often that you found a former Alliance member, who was also on Eden Prime for the Geth attack, so she and Jacob were reminiscing on the fun experiences they had been through in the Alliance. Needless to say, many of their memories involved an impatient, ineffective bureaucracy that often failed to acknowledge the threat that the Batarians posed to their colonies, and refused to allocate additional funds and soldiers to the more isolated colonies.

Ash had to admit, for all of Cerberus's moral faults, they knew how to stock an armory. They had M8 Avengers, M15 Vindicators, M12 Hand Cannons, M78 Vipers, a M76 Reverent LMG(7), and even what looked like a Collector's weapon. The armory was stocked with enough weaponry to fight a small war, or at the very least, a revolution. All of the weapons were all top of the line equipment, and very expensive, which was only proof in her eyes that Cerberus listened to what their field operatives said that they needed, unlike the Alliance.

Then there were the UNSC munitions that Chief had gladly donated to their cause. Although most of the weapons were not able to penetrate a kinetic barrier, the heavy weapons, and the salvaged "Covenant" technology was still able to pack a punch. She examined one box that had particularly got her attention. It was long and square, and stenciled on the side was: W/AV M6 G/GNR (8). She knew that her next message to Alliance command was going to probably be very interesting, given the wealth of knowledge that she had discovered about Cerberus, and about the Collectors. That wasn't even counting the plasma weapons, which she would be forwarding information about posthaste to Alliance Command, ASAP.

**Com Room**

"So, we're in an alternate universe? "

The question was a simple one, but it could mean the answer to where the Spirit of Fire had arrived at, and could also prove to be the only way to return home. However, Captain Cutter had decided that upon getting an update on the Human-Covenant War from the Chief, that they could better help the UNSC if they arrived back home with either a way to open a portal to this universe, or if they came home with with as much new supplies, technology as possible and even a few ships, if they were lucky. That meant that they would be spending some time in this alternate universe, gathering as much as they could, and preparing for their journey through Slipspace.

The UNSC had been reduced to a shadow of its former self, barley holding on to Sol, but they were in desperate need of a morale boost, and they also needed new technology, to help fend off a Loyalist attack. The technology in this universe could theoretically help them accomplish the goal of helping to rebuild the UNSC.

Currently, he was discussing their situation with Red Team, Commander Shepard, and Master Chief, in the Com Room. At least, Shepard and Cutter were discussing how to get back. Red Team and Chief were going through a debriefing about what they had encountered. Needless to say, Red Team was surprised at the information the Chief seemed to know about the parasite, or "Flood" as it was called.

Shepard nodded, and said" Yes, apparently, the common denominator between your arrival and Chief's arrival is your Slipspace engines. However, given that we have access to a Slipspace engine of our own, we might be able to figure out how to send you back. According to Cortana however, the Slipspace engine onboard the _Forward unto Dawn_ was badly damaged in the event that brought them here, so that means it might not work properly, and even then, we'd have to rip it out of the frigate, and transfer it over to the _Fire_. However, that means we either have to bring this vessel through a Mass Relay to get to the frigate, or we bring the frigate to way, it's not going to be a easy job to accomplish, but I think that it can be done."

Unfortunately, the _Spirit of Fire's_ reactor starting up hadn't gone unnoticed.(9) On the Collector Station, a set of massive doors began opening, and from them emerged a terrifying sight. It was one that had only been seen by a few; at least it had been seen by a few people who had lived afterward to tell others about what they had seen. The Collector Cruiser slipped from its home, and began scanning the belt of debris that was surrounding their home. They activated the Oculus drones, seeded in the belt, and ordered them to attack the ships.

The drones' onboard targeting system led all of them to target the larger, more alien target, reasoning that it would take more firepower to bring it down. Unfortunately for them, UNSC ships were designed to deal with swarms of hostile missiles. That meant that UNSC ships were often equipped with multiple 50mm(10) PDW(11) cannons, which often were the bane of Covenant Seraph fighters, due to their impressive firepower, and the speed at which they could target and destroy a threat, when controlled by a Smart AI, like Serina.

The Oculus drones opened fire with their onboard energy weapons, which carved through the Titanium-A armor plating that covered the ship, but they were met with a literal storm of firepower, as Serina tasked all of the 52 PDW turrets that could target the hostile drones. Although the floating junk made it difficult for her to deal with the small and nimble drones, she managed to down the majority of them, but the _Fire_ suffered severe damage in the process. The few surviviors began anglisng around for alternate passes, but a salvo of Archer missiles quickly removed them from the _Fire's_ threat board, but the damage was done.

The drones' weapons had ripped through the Titanium-A armor like a bandsaw through warm butter, opening many compartments to vacuum. The living quarters were particularly hard hit, with many of the Marines who had survived battles with the Flood and the Covenant being sucked out into the void before the eyes of their comrades. In addition to that, several Archer pods were hit, the explosions of several hundred missiles detonating in their launch tubes ripping open more chunks of the ship's hull.

Fortunately, the beams missed the bay where the Shiva nuclear missiles were stored, but that offered little comfort to the bridge crew, who were busy trying to shout orders to the firefighting and DC(12) units scattered throughout the ship. The DC units had given up trying to repair the damage, given the lack of proper repair facilities and supplies, and were instead busy trying to save as many crew as possible.

They knew that they couldn't save everyone, but they tried all the same to save as many as possible. As it was, they had already been forced to vent the atmosphere in one of the secondary Marine armories, dooming the 4 armory techs, and the 2 companies of Marines who had taken shelter in the airtight armory to a death by asphyxiation, but that was preferable to having the munitions detonate and expose the engine room to the vacuum of space, disabling the ship.

The gallant _Sprit of Fire_ was venting atmosphere from many parts of the ship, and in addition, bodies and debris were jetting away from the ship, sucked form their resting places by the inexorable pull of the vacuum. Serina sent out an urgent message to the Normandy, informing them of their problem, and requesting assistance.

However, it seemed that they were busy dealing with the Collector Cruiser, as Joker slammed his fist down on the Thanix cannon's firing control, unleashing a stream of molten metal propelled at relativistic velocities at the cruiser. The cannons light up with a light blue energy as they fired, illuminating the carvings done on the sides of the barrels. Shepard's request was to have etched into the sides of the cannons the names of each colony hit by the Collectors. _Horizon. Freedom's Progress. Ferrus Fields._ Those names and many more were etched into the guns sides, a clearly visible tribute to the lost. (13)

The Collector Cruiser, speared by a long lance of light blue energy, began maneuvering off to the side, heading back towards the station, in a desperate bid to escape the Normandy. It managed to get close to the station, and began rotating, presenting its broadside cannons to the Normandy. Closing fast, the slick sight of the Normandy flew into prime firing range, and Shepard, who had joined Joker up in the cockpit, said, in a loud clear voice, "This is for the Normandy, you bastards!" He then slammed his hand down on the firing control, and sent his vengeance firing off at the Collector cruiser.

While he was doing so, the _Spirit of Fire_ maneuvered itself outside of the debris, and the bridge crew and even Serina were rendered silent. After all, being the only people who've seen a black hole at such proximity was a staggering realization. However, that paled to the sight of the Normandy being consumed in a massive explosion.

Yeah, I like Garrus too much to bump him off. like that anyway

Stated in Operation First Strike that the IFF can be switched off, so that they're instead registered as unknown, instead of UNSC.

Challenge-response is basically, someone says a phrase, and the other person says the proper counter phrase. If it's correct, they're friends. If it's not correct, they're enemies.

Rather annoying Pro-human political party, and one that may end up being dealt with in the future… only seen in the first game, on the Citadel.

Starting to see WHY I like Cerberus? Note, that scenario was made up, but the colony name wasn't. For better explanations as to WHY I like them, check out _Explanations and Excuses_, on this site, in the Mass Effect archives.

What, there were some ME1 missions where Rachni were discovered having been distributed by Cerberus to various Alliance outposts. This is just my theory on why they did the experiments, much like why they did the Akuze massacre.

Hey, I'm in the prime location to buy black market gear in ME2, and Bioware didn't let me buy any, so this is my response to that, namely Cerberus pays you regularly, and supplies you with ammo and weapons, and what can't be given to you by Cerberus is bought from Omega's black market.

The Halo nerds in the audience should be realizing what nice Halo 3 era anti-vehicular weapon is in the box.

Insert Jaws theme here.

For the record, 50mm is about 1.96 inches long.

Point Defense Systems

Damage Control, who basically run around repairing the damaged systems during battles.

This is one feature that I wanted to have done, but I was torn whether I should do the names of the colonies, or the names of both of the Normandy's crew who were killed by the Collectors. I finally decided on the names of the colonies, as the engraving.


	14. Chapter 14

A/N: I don't own Mass Effect or Halo. Those belong to Bioware and Bungie. Note: this fic has spoilers for Mass Effect 2, Halo 3, and Halo Wars. All rights belong to the aforementioned game companies, and this fic has violence, language, and an AU universe for ME3.

On a side note, I've finally beaten Halo: Reach! That means, the weapons from Reach will probably be involved, or mentioned, I haven't decided which yet.

Responses to reviews:

Yeah, what makes you guys think that I like making Ash into an Alliance spy? Don't worry though, that will be corrected very soon. In one way, or another.

I do see Cerberus as a morally ambiguous organization, but it's one that I like working for, and one that actually respects my talents, unlike the Alliance, which had me go and handle all their dirty laundry, they always picked me instead of any of the other N7s. I mean, COME ON! Call in another N7 to handle the jobs, or even just some basic marines; don't have the N7 Spectre handle all of your dirty laundry, just because he's a Spectre. Pricks.

Shepard didn't exactly escape Mindoir without scars, something that many writers tend to forget. Watching your friends/family/most everyone you know getting slaughtered/mutilated/tortured by Batarians isn't known for instilling good mental health in a person, and Torfan didn't help matters in the slightest. Let's just say, it's better to be his friend than his enemy. He's loyal to his friends, but God help you if you're an enemy.

Of course I'm going to save the crew. Like I said, he's loyal to his friends, and why wouldn't Shepard bring all the heavy weapons? He's got a plan, and it's one with lots and lots of Collector cruor being spilled while he saves his friends.

Chapter quote:

"It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows achievement and who at the worst if he fails at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."

—**Teddy Roosevelt**

Chapter Begins:

The specter of the _Normandy_ flying through a massive fireball stunned the bridge crew of the _Fire_ for a second, but then they saw the Normandy fly right out of the fireball, a bit singed perhaps, but it was intact. Then they noticed that the _Normandy_ was acting a bit sluggish, and that it was leaning to one side. Then to their horror, the _Normandy_ crashed onto the station's surface, skidding in a manner that the Cerberus designers had most certainly _not_ planned for in their simulations.

Inside the ship, the situation was comparable to being in a can that was going through a paint shaker on high speed while an earthquake was going on. In Mordin's lab, beakers and other fragile glass things were shattering, and sending fragments flying around the lab. Mordin was forced to seek cover under a table, while shards of glass flew around the room. Similar scenes were playing out in the Medical Lab, and in the Mess Hall. Thane Krios, who had been getting a snack, had to call upon his training as an assassin to dodge a large bottle of olive oil, which shattered on the deck.

Fortunately for the ship, the Armory's backup Mass Effect generators prevented any of the weapons from flying around, and potentially detonating. Unfortunately for Jacob and Ash, the fields only affected the weapons and their tables, which meant that they were forced to grab onto the Jesus bars (1) installed on the ship's walls for just such an emergency.

The Spartans had tried to use the bars, but the problem was that they weren't designed with a person who was wearing 1100 pounds of armor in mind, so the bars were ripped from their mountings with the first major shake. They were forced to simply magnetize their boots, and call upon their training in zero-G to prevent them from vomiting. They did however, keep their footing, but with great difficulty, even with the added grip the magnetized boots gave them.

When the _Normandy_ slammed into the station, the jolt sent everyone flying to the ground, save Captain Cutter, who was caught in midair by Jerome, and Commander Shepard who managed to catch a Jesus bar with his right hand in the nick of time to prevent himself from slamming into the deck.

Once the shaking had subsided, the lights, which had been switched off by Cortana or EDI just before the collision, slowly flickered to life. Many of the main lights were shattered, the bulbs having been shaken right out of their sockets, and then smashed against their holders. The red auxiliary lights began kicking in, bathing the ship in an eerie red light. Shepard suddenly had a flashback to the destruction of the original _Normandy_, and yelled out, "EDI, damage report!"

EDI's projector by Joker's chair, where Joker was too busy trying to hold still and avoid grating his very likely broken ribs together, flickered to life, and she said" The _Normandy_ has suffered no critical damage, but we will need to reinstall most of the regular lighting, and in addition, we need to clean up a large quantity of shattered glass from much of the ship's decks. Fortunately, all systems are rebooting now."

As she spoke, the displays in the CIC rebooted, showing a blue screen with white text, but a second later, after Shepard had "accidentally" slammed his fist into a random console(2), the screens showed their normal orange color. Shepard walked over to the PA control, and pressed the "ALL DECKS" button, and said "Everyone who can walk and shoot, meet me in the conference room. If you can't do that, sound off, and someone will be along to get you to Medlab."

He walked to the Armory door, and pressed the open command on the door. The door control flashed red, and refused to open. His fist clenched, and he slammed it hard into the door control. Unfortunately for his hand, the controls were holographic, so his hand just slammed into the blast door. If Shepard hadn't been given reinforced bones due to the LAZARUS project, he'd have probably broken his hand and fingers. As it was, he nearly fractured two fingers. Clutching the unlucky hand with his other one, he viciously kicked the door with his armored boot. Fortunately for Shepard, that activated a proximity sensor, and opened the door, before Shepard could hurt himself further.

The Armory was a mess. Olive green UNSC crates were scattered around the room, with some of them leaking white foam packing peanuts, and one was even cracked in a couple places. In addition, thermal clips, gun cleaning parts, and even some metal blocks that were used to reload the guns ammunition supply were scattered everywhere.

Ash and Jacob were busy trying to stand steadily on their feet, after being shaken around for so long, their equilibrium was more than a little messed up. Ash wiped a smear of gun-cleaning gunk off her visor, and looked around at the mess. Fortunately, none of the weapons were damaged, so she, Jacob, and Shepard were able to easily clean up the room so one could walk through without slipping on a loose thermal clip.

Shepard then walked into the conference room, followed by Ash and Jacob. Once inside, he noticed that eveyroene was there, and they were all split up into small "cliques". Mordin, Tali, Grunt, and Garrus were busy checking their firearms, while Miranda, stood by the wall, and seemed to be doing a meditative biotic exercise along with Samara. Thane and Jack were busy checking their kinetic barrier generators, seeing how they were relying on those shields to be their only protection. Legion stood alone, apparently checking that his runtimes would be running at optimum efficiency during the assault.

Then Shepard looked at the Spartans. Red Team was busy getting acquainted with some of the Normandy's M8 Avenger rifles, checking the sights and heft of the rifles, while Chief sighted down the barrel of his M15 Vindicator. The low murmur of conversation stopped almost immediately, as everyone looked up to see who had come in. Shepard walked over to the conference table's controls, and said "The Collectors attacked our ship. They took our crew, our friends. They think we're helpless. They're wrong. They started a war, but we're not here to finish it. We're here to make them regret - to show them and everyone else what happens when you go too far. No more running, no more waiting. Let's hit them where they live. EDI bring up the base's schematics."

On the holographic display, a holographic display of the base appeared. Shepard gestured to a massive chamber, which took up much of the station's room, and said" That's our objective. We've detected much of the station's power being diverted to this chamber, which makes it a prime target for us. The only ways in are locked by a pair of blast doors, but the controls for overriding them can be reached if we send someone through this ventilation shaft, here."

**Citadel, Councilor Anderson's Office, 0845 hours**

Councilor Anderson settled into his desk chair, and opened his extranet terminal. Once it was open, he scanned through his email list, deleting the spam that had somehow made it through his spam filters, and opening and decrypting the others. The emails were standard fare, invites to the Alliance Veterans Memorial Ball, requests from Earth to see about getting Council approval into researching some limited genetical enhancements, requests from Terra Firma, and even a request from a Ms. Al-Jilani, a reporter who had interviewed Shepard in the past, and was seeking to re-interview him. That email, he forwarded to Shepard, mainly because he knew that Shepard would get a laugh out of that sort of email.

Ms. Al-Jilani had tried to interview Shepard two years ago, and her bias towards humanity over other species had not sat well with Shepard, whose reaction to her claims that he was a "Pawn to the Council" involved some very choice profanity, and having Tali overload her drone camera, destroying Jilani's footage. She had complained to the Alliance, but unfortunately for her, she had done a story the week before, that had insinuated that the average Alliance marine was "overpaid, underworked, and totally uncaring towards humanity's future, and more concerned with getting drunk than their duties." Needless to say, her complaints were ignored, and she was banned from setting foot on an Alliance vessel or facility as long as she lived. (3)

She had been also demoted following the loss of an expensive drone camera, which hadn't helped the situation. Then she had later run into Shepard, and had once again tried to interview him. The only problem was that her questions very obviously loaded, and she was embarrassed yet again, as Shepard pointed out that the Alliance's sacrifices made at the Battle of the Citadel were not made lightly, and that she should respect the dead better.

He noticed another email, originating from Commander Shepard's extranet account address. He opened it and it read:

_Old friend,_

_I'm writing this to let you know that we're going through the Omega-4 Relay in a few hours. The Collectors boarded the Normandy while I was away, and abducted my crew, save for Joker. I'm going to get them back. In addition, this email contains some attached files, listing all the information that we've collected on the Collectors (hah, hah, hah) and some other bits of data that you might find interesting. However, the most shocking discovery that we've made is that the Collectors were Protheans!_

Anderson, who had been sipping a cup of Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee, had a spit take (4) as he read the last sentence, sending the coffee flying over the screen. He wiped the coffee off with a nearby napkin, and continued reading.

_Now that you've finished having a mild heart attack at that shocker, I should let you know that we've also picked up a couple new members of my team. One is a Geth, and get this! Not all the Geth want to exterminate all organic life! In fact, they've got no qualms about letting us go our own ways, and they may even ally with us against the Reapers when they come._

_We also picked up a human who, apparently came from a alternate universe, and I'm sure that Ashley's told you all about him, so I won't go into detail, as I'll let the attached files do the speaking for me._

_Hope to speak to you after I'm done with the Collectors. We've got a lot to talk about, especially regarding the Alliance._

Upon reading the final sentence, Anderson reached over to his desk's built-in intercom, and pushed the button for his secretary. When she answered, Anderson said"I need to talk to the Council, right away."

**Rannoch orbit**

The Geth had been puzzled at Durendal's(5) request, but they had seen it as a challenge to their skills. Getting some of the materials was difficult, but it was manageable, given the data that had been included with the request. The request had been for a body to look identical to a human female (6), down to the genetic level, and to also be anatomically correct at the same time. In addition, the body had to be capable of enduring a series of modifications that would substantially boost the host body's strength, reflexes, and senses.

In addition to those requirements, they had to make the body so that its brain was more or less designed similar to a Geth hub, where a program could download itself into a new body if need be. The body was at last complete, and ready for Durendal.

The bar you find above your seat in a car, used by the passenger(s) as an emergency support. They're called that because the holder is usually shouting "Jesus Christ", or various obscenities when in use.

Percussive maintenance. Time honored tradition of fixing troublesome equipment by smacking it with something, usually a fist.

I'll let the readers decide the final fate of Ms. Jilani, so state your choice as to which option suits your perceived punishment for her.

Shepard files a defamation suit against her, and gets her fired and bankrupts her at the same time.

Shepard sits down with her, and reveals that he bought up the majority stock of the news station, and that she's fired. And she's blacklisted from ever working in the media industry again.

Shepard/ Cerberus arrange an "accident" involving her aircar, its brakes, and a terminal collision with a building. Bailey covers up any obvious signs of foul play.

Shepard does an interview with her rivals, and reveals that all Jilani's scoops and reports are based on biased news and twisted facts. She's ruined, fired, and blacklisted from the media industry.

Who says tropes are all bad?

Those of you know who Durendal is get a +5 Internet

She's not a blonde, she's not wearing a red dress, and she's not going to be reappearing inside anyone's head as a hallucination. That being said, **NO** Cylon jokes!


	15. Chapter 15

A/N: I think you guys have the drill down by now, I don't own Halo or Mass Effect. Al rights belong to Bungie Game Studios and Bioware. This fic has violence, language, Renegade Mshep/Ash relationship, and a Chief/? relationship. I need a beta, so any takers?

On a sidenote, why does everyone see a FShep/Alenko relationship as common, but a MShep/Ash relationship is something so rare, it's almost impossible to find? I mean, What Alenko's rejection at Horizon is somehow easier to forgive than Ash's?

Oh, and on a side, note: I GOT ACCEPTED TO NORWICH!

Responses to reviews:

Will attempt to update faster, but school, holidays, applying to colleges, getting accepted to colleges, and the like tends to slow one's schedule down some. Also sorry about the length, but now the chapters will be longer, but less frequent.

Sorry, will try to correct that in the future. Seeing how everyone I've asked to be my Beta has said negative, I've given up asking for the most part. See appeal at end of disclaimer for further details.

Shepard knows that Anderson's email is monitored by Alliance Intel, and possibly also C-Sec, so he wasn't about to say too much beyond the bare minimum. Besides, he's got a meeting scheduled in after the Omeaga-4 Relay.

I've tallied up the votes for Al-Jilani's fate. Currently, I sense an interview in Shepard's future…

Credit to JadedObserver, Eipok, and Mordalfus Grea for being the only ones who made the connection. Durendal is the name of a AI from Marathon, which Bungie made prior to the Halo series, and has often been compared to Cortana. That being said, Durendal is Cortana.

Chapter Quote: Whoever said the pen is mightier than the sword obviously never encountered automatic weapons." - General Douglas MacArthur

Chapter begins:

Sometimes, soldiers encounter events which they have never been trained for, nor are they equipped to deal with. John was certain that if someone had told him prior to the Battle of Installation 04, that he would be walking through a extremely hot vent in a alien space station, with another alien alongside him, while trying to stop a invasion of sentient machines bent on the extermination of all organic life, he would've probably signaled for the men in the white coats to come escort their prisoner back to his padded cell.

That being said, he was not enjoying himself in the least bit. He had been assigned to escort Tali through the vents in the Collector station, so that she could override the blast doors and let both the distraction team, and Shepard's team into the central chamber. That sounded like a job that could be hazardous, so Shepard had assigned Chief to guard her, figuring that they complimented each other nicely. Tali's tech skills, when used with Chief's firepower and experience, could easily deal with anything that the Collectors might send their way.

Tali, however, wasn't exactly enjoying herself. Despite being cramped into a small space with a person to whom she was attracted, the heat was murder, as she had to wait for Shepard to open a hatch to let her and her bodyguard through. It seemed that the designers of her environmental suit hadn't planned on the person who would be wearing the suit to get into a scenario where there would be lots of heat with no way of alleviating said heat. The designers were forced to make do with what resources they had, and probably figured that the fool who found him or herself in such a situation would be able to jury-rig a solution to the problem. As a result, the suits weren't intended for long term exposure to heat, as it had a tendency to put extra stress on the suit's powerplant, which if properly stressed enough, could have an explosive result.

Chief had tried using his physical strength to simply pull the first door they came across, up, but closer examination revealed that the door was magnetically sealed, leaving no place for Chief to get a firm hold on the smooth and alien metal. A satchel charge managed to remove the dust that was covering the door, but otherwise had little effect, save creating a shallow dent in the door. They had then to wait for Shepard and company to discover a button, which when pushed open the hatch, allowing them passage.

Needless to say, being reliant on someone else for his safety wasn't a comforting feeling for Chief. It also brought about some awkward pauses, as they waited in the vent for Shepard, Thane, and Jerome to slough their way through Collector forces to hit the last activation switch. Currently, Chief was busy watching their progress on Jerome's mission recorder (1), while Tali was busy using her omnitool to check out some of the UNSC's files, which Chief had given out to the crew.

In particular, she was interested in UNSC ship designs, as they were designed not to run on Element Zero, a useful tidbit which was absolutely priceless for the Migrant Fleet. If they could somehow convert their ships so that they didn't run on Eezo, then a major liability would finally be removed from the Migrant Fleet. (2) That meant that they could finally be able to convince a local planetary government to give them a semi-permanent home, or at least one to park many of their Lifeships and other vulnerable ships.

**Commander Shepard's Squad, Collector Base, Unknown timestamp**

Shepard was having a relatively good time so far. He, Thane, and Jerome were busy plowing their way through the hordes of Collector soldiers. Currently, they were pinned down behind a series of organic, waist high barricades that was the only source of cover between them and the Collector's elevated position. The Collectors were on the opposite side of a narrow bridge, on the rise of a small hill, which offered them overlapping fields of fire, an advantage that was countered by the fact that all 3 of Shepard's team were equipped with sniper rifles, and were also well trained marksmen. Jerome and Thane were even having a little friendly competition to see who could get the most kills. The loud crack of Jerome's SRS99 anti-material rifle firing off a 14.5mm slug (3), almost muffled the softer sound of Thane's M-97 Viper sniper rifle, and it took a few shots for someone to be able to distinguish between the two.

Jerome's fear that the SRS99 would prove ineffective against the Collectors was proved unfounded when he blew the brains of a Collector Assassin out the back of its head with a single shot, splattering the wall behind it with a light brown liquid stain. Shepard though, wasn't about to be outdone, and he pulled his sniper rifle, a massive Widow anti-material rifle, and opened fire. His slug removed much of the upper body of a Collector solider, painting the back wall with a massive spray of ichor. Harbinger began his usual arrival method, sending an unfortunate Collector into the air, where it began to change.

Unfortunately, all that did was to make itself a big target, as all three snipers targeted and fired on him at the same time. While Harbinger's biotic barriers and armor were tough, the UNSC had designed the SRS99 to be able to rip through Elite personal shields, and Shepard's weapon had originally been designed to deal with armored vehicles, so it wasn't exactly a fair contest. Harbinger's body virtually exploded; drenching the nearby Collector troops with the liquid remains of their comrade.

It wasn't too long before Shepard and his team was able to stroll across the bridge, and up the hill, now occupied by dead Collectors. They policed the bodies, grabbing thermal clips, and then moved onto the last switch needed to open the tube for Chief and Tali to access the door controls. Shepard slammed his hand onto the control, and then whipped his head around, to see what looked to be an entire army of Collectors swarming towards his position.

Instantly, Shepard, Thane, and Jerome threw themselves behind some form of cover and opened fire, not with their snipers, but with their alternate weapons. Shepard's Geth pulse rifle fired off blue pulses of energy, which upon impact with a target, cauterized the wound, and at the same time gave the subject 2nd degree burns. Thane opened fire with his Tempest, the light shots not proving as dangerous as Shepard's Geth weapon, but still proving effective against the encroaching horde. Jerome hefted an M-72 Reverent LMG, and opened fire, liberally covering the approaching horde with a virtual wall of bullets.

Out of nowhere, Jerome was reminded of Jorge, S-052, whose signature weapon was a M247 HMG, similar to this one. He wondered how Jorge was doing,(4) as last he had heard, Jorge was busy trying to prevent UNSC forces from being pushed off Charybdis IX, While his weapon wasn't as accurate as their weapons, it made up for that with sheer volume of fire, forcing many Collectors to dive for cover. Then Shepard heard a transmission from the distraction team's leader, Garrus.

Garrus was yelling "Get her into cover! Mordin, tend to her! Suppressing Fire, Suppressing Fire! "He was partly cut off by the sound of a concussive shot being fired off, "-ly's been hit! Tali! We need these doors sealed NOW!"

Behind him, Shepard heard the sound of the doors slowly sliding open, and he, Jerome and Thane began slowly moving backwards, still continuing their suppressive barrage. They did however, have to stop occasionally reload, and to let their shields recharge. Once they were on the other side of the doors, Tali was able to slam them shut, just as a Collector projectile slammed into the now closed doors. A loud thud was heard from the other side, then a loud swarm of pattering, as shots began slamming into the thick doors.

Shepard turned, and looked at the team he had assembled. Grunt's armor was almost liberally painted with Collector blood, a testament to the wild antics of the young pure Krogan. Legion was busy doing some field repairs to Jacob's M-27 shotgun, a victim of a lucky shot, while Miranda was busy applying a tourniquet to Jack's arm, a task made easy by the fact that Jack was apparently unconscious. Alice, Jerome, and Douglas were busy conversing with Chief in a corner, while Mordin was huddled over a prone figure, which wasn't moving. Shepard, a sinking realization in his stomach, moved over to Mordin's side. Shepard looked down and saw the prone figure of Operations Chief Ashley Williams.(5)

Remember how the Council kept refusing to admit that Shepard was right and that the Reapers exist and are coming? Well, I think that some helmet recordings should change their tones… And seeing how Shepard will be going on a live interview before too long, I have a nasty plan.

Consider how much Eezo 50,000 ships must suck up. Now consider being able to use something other than Eezo as fuel. See why they would want that technology?

Yes, your average UNSC gun might not have been able to do much to a shielded foe in the ME'verse, but when you start using anti-vehicular or anti-material weaponry, that fine point tends to be irrelevant.

Will Noble Team be taking part in this fic? Well, Jorge was at the center of a Slipspace malfunction…

Insert dramatic music here.


	16. Chapter 16

A/N: I think you guys have the drill down by now, I don't own Halo or Mass Effect. Al rights belong to Bungie Game Studios and Bioware. This fic has violence, language, Renegade Mshep/Ash relationship, and a Chief/? relationship. For any readers who are TV Tropers, would you please either do a FF recommendation page, or a page for this fic? PLEASE?

Fanfic Recommendation: Explanations and Excuses, by populan. It's one of the few fanfics that actually has a Renegade Shepard, and makes Cerberus not seem like scum of the Earth, but actually somewhat reasonable and sympathetic. I heartily recommend it for any Renegade ME writer who's interested.

Responses to reviews:

Yes, I now know that Eezo isn't their fuel, mea culpa.

Thanks for all the congratulations.

Explosive rounds? Last I checked, they weren't using any explosive rounds. At least, not yet…

Chapter quote :" 'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." Lord Alfred Tennyson

Alternate Chapter Quote: "I do not hold grudges. I have no surviving enemies."

Alternate Alternate Chapter quote: "Beware the fury of a patient man." 

Chapter begins:

Anger often had several levels. They ranged from the mildly annoyed; to the sort of anger that made a Krogan suffering from Blood Rage look like a meek kitten in comparison. Shepard was currently in that rage, but he suppressed his anger. This wasn't the time or the place to unleash his anger, but one thing was clear: The Collectors had thought that Shepard couldn't get any deadlier. They were wrong, oh so very, very wrong. (1) All of a sudden, Ash's eyes flew open, and she sucked in a loud breath! Shepard's eyes widened in shock, as he reached down, and grabbed her hand, saying, "It's alright Ash; we're going to get you out of here."

She seemed to understand, nodding her head, and grimacing, as Mordin removed the armor that was protecting her chest. Shepard could clearly see the pit marks on the armor, and the 3 craters in the plating where the mortal shots had gone through. On her olive toned skin, 3 red spots clearly stood out. The most dangerous one had punctured her right lung, but that had been stabilized with a shot of biofoam, the white foam plugging up the hole in her chest. However, the other shots had gone through her liver, and one had nicked her aorta. Those wounds had also been stabilized with biofoam, but the biofoam was at best a temporary solution, and they needed to get her to a proper medical facility or else she would die.

Shepard looked at the other side of the room, and saw that the walls were lined with pods, much like he had seen on Horizon. Each pod, to his horror, had an occupant, including some that he recognized from the Normandy. He saw Dr. Chakwas, Kelly, Donnelly, Rupert, and more.

Shepard walked over to one of the pods, containing a colonist from Horizon. He studied her carefully, while ignoring the sounds of Mordin prepping Ash for transport back to the Normandy. There was no question that Mordin would be the one escorting her back, as Ash could barely stay conscious, much less walk back through the Collector station unescorted, with major internal injuries.

A thought came to him, if he could get her back to the Normandy in time, maybe… no, it was inhumane! It was impersonal! It would go against what little morals that hadn't been burned out of him by Mindoir and Torfan! But, a small voice in his head chimed in, hadn't both he and Ash sacrificed enough to the Alliance? They had given much of their lives, they had risked death numerous times, they had given their sweat, their blood, and in Shepard's case, their lives to the Alliance. And what did they get in return, for all their years of faithful service?

Ash had been assigned to colonial garrisons and various other rear-end assignments, for all her career, just because her grandfather had been forced to surrender to the superior firepower of the Turian invasion forces. That wasn't even counting the near Sisyphean efforts that she had done in order to get promoted up to a rank with some actual power!

Shepard had been regarded by many Alliance members as either a basket case, or an immoral monster, and that was before he had learned of the Reapers, and come back from the dead. The Alliance had abandoned him, not even doing him the favor of recovering his corpse (2) and after his resurrection had tried to take him into custody (3), without even taking his story at face value! After all he had done for them; they wanted to lock him up! Some reward for his hard service!

He was reminded of a quote from an old politician, John F. Kennedy, "Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.**" **He had been changed, and if he kept trying to look back at the past, he would miss the future, and the Reaper invasion.

However, he wanted Ash by his side, so that meant that he had to bring her along, and besides, the Alliance had sent her to spy on him, so _Quid pro Quo_. He walked over to Miranda, to discuss a matter of the utmost importance with her.

The colonists' eyes flew open, and Shepard recoiled from her in surprise. She began looking around frantically, her screams muffled by the pod's walls. The rest of the crew, save Mordin, rushed over, and watched, as a grey something began drizzling down on her, making her shrieks even louder, and to the horror of those assembled, she began dissolving, melting down into what must be a puddle of goo on the pod's bottom. Shepard turned away from the horrifying sight, and ordered "Break the pods open! We have to get the crew out NOW!" he turned, and pulling the Vindicator rifle from his back, began using it like a club, hammering the rifle's butt into the sides of the pod containing Dr. Chakwas. He put all thoughts of Ash, and everything else out of his mind, and with a loud bang, slammed the butt into the side of the pod.

**Exterior of Collector Base, UNSC CFV-88 **_**Sprit of Fire**_

The _Spirit of Fire_ had gone through Hell, and while they had survived, it wasn't without major sacrifice. Out of a total compliment of 15,000 crew and Marines, they had lost about 1,256 dealing with the "Flood", and then the Collectors had attacked them. They had lost an additional 7,852 Marines and crew, many of whom were killed when their cryo-bays was hit with a beam, ripping open a hole to vacuum, while many of the occupants were still groggy from being defrosted rapidly. That wasn't even counting the previous casualties already suffered dealing with Covenant forces prior to their discovery. In total, the _Fire_ had suffered about 11, 056 casualties, about 80% of which were fatal.

That wasn't even counting the major damage that had been inflicted on the vessel since it had been forced to destroy the Forerunner warships. Numerous hull compartments had been opened to vacuum, their contents being sucked out into the vacuum, lost forever. The remaining crew were forced to enlist many of the Marines who had experience in electronics or other useful skills like welding, just to help repair the damage, including rewiring many parts of the ship, and rerouting much of the necessary circuitry that the _Fire_ ran on, so as to avoid the numerous cut-outs in the grid.

The task was made harder by the fact that many of the dead crew were experienced DC party members, a problem which couldn't be easily rectified. In addition to that, many of the cargo hold which held the spare parts necessary to keep the ship running had been opened to vacuum, due to their storage near key areas of the ship like barracks, hanger bays, and even near some of the munitions storage area. By accident or by design, the enemy had aimed for areas whose loss would surely cripple the ship, even if they survived the battle.

Most of the crew who weren't busy trying to keep the ship alive were busy reading over the files that had been transmitted to them by the Normandy detailing both the universe that they were now stuck in, and the conclusion of the Human-Covenant War. Needless to say, reactions were mixed, but the most common emotion was despair. Many of the crew onboard the _Fire_ had grown up on colonies, and had hoped that their homes were still intact and waiting for them at the end of the war. That hope was false for many of them, but there were a few lucky survivors, but their joy was tempered by the fact that while they had gotten lucky, there were many more that hadn't been so fortunate.

One thing was certain though: The _Fire_ had gone through Hell, and now was in need of some MAJOR repairs, preferably at the nearest available shipyard with no time wasted. However, Cutter had been scanning the files sent over by the Normandy for the past half hour, and he hadn't been able to find any shipyards that were large enough to hold the _Fire_, seeing how the Alliance's docks where they could theoretically have a dreadnought docked were busy, the few spaces where a ship the size of the _Fire_ could dock were either occupied by a dreadnought, or were slated to have one arrive shortly.

So far, it was looking like he might have to consider either using an alien-controlled port, something that he was distinctly uncomfortable with, or he could use a Cerberus dock, which could be a bit safer in terms of security, but would also mean that he would have a terrorist organization being responsible for his ship's security.

Neither option sounded particularly appealing to him, but he knew that without a place to dock and repair his ship, he wouldn't be commanding a ship for very long, partly due to the fact that it would quickly run out of supplies, and fall apart due to lack of maintenance. He felt no love for Cerberus, but he knew that he needed their help, and besides, if he went to the Alliance, who knows how they would react. Cutter was a naval man to the bone, having served in it since the age of 25, but even he knew that there were times when you have to give up your morals for more important matters.

F*** with Ash, Shep puts you on a slab. Pretty easy to remember, right?

This is a constant bit of rage for me. They have the Normandy's location, and they couldn't do Shepard the luxury of FINDING HIS COPRSE? I mean, thanks to him, the Alliance is now part of the Council, and yet they can't spare a frigate to search for his body. What, the rescue boat couldn't stay, and look for his body?

Shadow Broker dossier from Adm. Hackett states that the Alliance wanted him in chains, but was denied by Hackett, earning some respect for him in my books.


	17. Chapter 17

A/N: I think you guys have the drill down by now, I don't own Halo or Mass Effect. Al rights belong to Bungie Game Studios and Bioware. This fic has violence, language, Renegade Mshep/Ash relationship, and a Chief/? relationship. For any readers who are TV Tropers, would you please either do a FF recommendation page, or a page for this fic? PLEASE?

Oh, and Bioware made their big announcement on December 11th, 2010. Mass Effect 3 is slated for the Holiday season this year. HUZZAH! Joy to the world!

Fanfic Recommendation: Renegade, by Peptuck. Peptuck asks what would happen if the C&C Universe were to merge with the Mass Effect Universe. The response: a tale that is sure to rock the world of the reader who takes the time to enjoy it.

Responses to reviews:

What can I say? It doesn't make sense that the Fire manages to do all that damage to the Covenant, without suffering heavy casualties. After all, the UNSC has some advantages on the ground, but not that many.

Thanks, I try to avoid just making this have ME2 with a new squad member, and your suggestion may or may not be implemented.

Why do you think I respect Hacket? He's a member of a select group of people, called the "Alliance members who I respect" club, and membership is really limited. I mean, only Joker, Alenko, Ash, Anderson, Shepard, and Hacket got in.

Hey, Chief's suffered enough death in his life, who's to say that I shouldn't bring back some of his family?

End reviews section

Chapter Quote:" **Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,****  
****Or close the wall up with our English dead!****  
****In peace there 's nothing so becomes a man****  
****As modest stillness and humility;****  
****But when the blast of war blows in our ears,****  
****Then imitate the action of the tiger:****  
****Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood. "**

William Shakespeare

Beginning of story

"Thank you Commander. If you hadn't come along when you had, I don't want to think about what would've happened to myself and the rest of the crew." Chakwas visibly shuddered; the image was at odds with that of the normally unflappable woman that Shepard was familiar with. She was lying down on her side in the chamber, looking up at Shepard as he scanned the room with his eyes. Fortunately, they had managed to save the Normandy's crew, and now Shepard was trying to figure out what to do with the crew. Keeping them with him was out of the question, as they weren't armed and would probably only get in the way. He considered his options carefully, and finally made his choice.

Mordin, Miranda, and the rest of the crew walked into the tube that Chief and Tali had come through, two of the stronger crew members carrying Ash on a collapsible stretcher. With any luck, the Collectors would concentrate on the larger threat, and ignore the escaping crew. Once back on the Normandy, they should be safe from any Collector attacks.

Shepard looked back at the rest of the assault squad, and said "OK, let's see about getting to this power source." His voice's tone was one of tightly controlled rage, with a undercurrent of impending violence. He had used that tone once before, about 7 years ago, on a small moon called Torfan.

**Citadel, Councilor Anderson's Office**

Things had gone from bad to worse for Anderson. The forces that the Alliance had sent to secure the remains of the _Forward unto Dawn_ had reported back, and they had apparently been repelled by Geth forces. The worst bit of news however, was that the Geth had destroyed the _Dawn_. Decades, if not centuries of technical advancement had been destroyed, much like the Prothean beacon on Eden Prime. To be fair though, the Council couldn't really blame the Alliance for this incident, as they had been in the middle of a battle, and had bigger problems to worry about. Anderson was certain that he would be given hell from the Council for the Alliance's failure.

That wasn't even counting the files he had gotten from Shepard. Needless to say, there was no way in hell that those files would ever see the light of day for the next couple centuries or so. However, he did know that whether the Council liked it or not, the Reapers were real. Shepard had provided some very conclusive documentation about a Reaper husk that was apparently over 37 million years old. That little bit of information alone could blow the "Sovereign was a Geth dreadnought" theory clean out of the water. The only problem was that he had a feeling that the Council's response plan would be to either issue a DA-Notice (1), or just to ignore the whole issue altogether.

Anderson reviewed his agenda for today. It was a fairly light schedule, a meeting to discuss the next class of N7s with Admiral Hackett, a interview with Emily Wong about the missing colonists, and a Council meeting to discuss potentially allowing the Alliance to open up a couple of Mass Relays, which he knew would be rejected but one could hope.

**Collector Base, ERROR Time/Date unknown**

Professor Anders was really starting to regret being recruited by ONI. While she enjoyed the intellectual challenge of studying the Covenant, and the Forerunners, the fact remained that she was a civilian onboard a military vessel, which meant that she was hardly the most popular member of the crew. Many of the ship's crew had been protested by Outer Colony citizens, who were protesting against the UNSC's heavy-handed attempts at shutting down the URF. Fortunately, those movements had died fairly fast once the Covenant had been discovered. Ironically, the Covenant had saved the UNSC from open rebellion, something which the UNSC had thought impossible.

Currently, she was faced with the difficulty of trying to fix the _Spirit of Fire_, or at least ensure that it would survive a few Mass Relays, as they were termed. The problem was that she lacked both a large enough portion of the crew and much of the necessary wiring and hull plating. While all UNSC ships had spare materials to help repair the ship in case of damage, the problem was that they lacked enough crew to actually perform much of the necessary repairs. In addition to that, many of the emergency spare parts storage areas had been hit and destroyed, making the repair job much harder than it was already.

One of the crew had suggested using some of the Cyclops powered suits to aid in the reconstruction. The main problem with that was that you had to modify the armor, and remove the armament. However, once that was done, they could theoretically see about creating some form of a wireless bridge, connecting the Cyclops in a sort of network that Serina could control. That would enable them to see about multiplying the number of workers that could be used at the same time. Currently, the resourceful individual had been assigned to a work detail whose job was to see about removing the jackhammers from their respective suits, which was rather difficult as said tools were built into the arms, making their removal near impossible without compromising motor functions in the arms.

Some brave "volunteers" had been given a special task: go take a look in some of the depressurized areas, and check for whatever could be salvaged. If need be, Cutter was going to have them start ripping parts of the wall in the uninhabited areas, and using said parts to help repair used areas of the ship. The _Fire_ may have been wounded, but she wasn't out of the fight yet.

British notice that means the government requests that the story not be run, and is completely voluntary.


	18. Chapter 18

A/N: Do I really need to state the disclaimer by now? I mean, it's only about chapter 16 by my reckoning, and if you've been paying attention to these notes, you'd notice that I don't own the Halo Franchise, nor do I own the Mass Effect Franchise. Those belong to Bungie, and Bioware respectively. Note, future chapters will be delayed, as I have now selected my college, and have started the fun job of scholarship hunting, which necessitates me doing work on the scholarships. In addition, NH has been repeatedly hit with snowstorms, so I have to keep shoveling out my house. Joy.

Note, this fic has a RENEGADE MShep/Ash relationship. That means that Shepard is NOT a paragon, nor a paragade. Colonist/Ruthless Shepard. This fic also has a Chief/? relationship, later to be revealed. No, it's not a Yaoi, so don't worry.

Fanfic Recommendations: The Parallel: Two Corpses, by Kireteiru. Note, this Halo 'verse AU, M-rated Fic is a monumental piece of work, with a very interesting concept. I refuse to give more info, but I seriously suggest that you go and check it out. You won't regret it, believe me.

Responses to reviews:

Thanks, it's nice having some feedback on the latest chapter.

End of reviews

Chapter Quote:" Teamwork is essential; it gives the enemy other people to shoot at. "

_Anonymous_

Note: I decided to skip the whole part of the Collector base that had the biotic bubble protecting you from the swarms, the boss fight, and the hold the line speech, as it would've just been a C&P, so this will be a chapter away from the Collector Station. Next chapter will get back in time for the final boss, and the choice.

Beginning of fic

**Citadel, Councilor Anderson's Office**

Shepard had known from the get-go that the Council wouldn't believe his story without evidence, so he had taken the time to carefully assemble all the proof into a set of files, complete with attached video and pictures, and even had a courier deliver some samples from the derelict Reaper husk to be carbon-dated. He had sent mission recorders from the adventure inside the Reaper husk, sworn affidavits from the crew regarding the Reapers, the logs of the team grabbing the IFF from the husk, testimony from Legion, a copy of Mordin's Swarm repellent, multiple samples from the Collector ship, and he had even sent them Veetor's omni-tool data, or at least a copy of it.

Anderson had watched the video of the mission inside the husk, along with the logs from the IFF team, and had been reminded of a famous Earth author named H.P. Lovecraft, whose works seemed eerily familiar with the topics of the Reapers and Indoctrination. However, seeing how he had died in 1937, it was unlikely that he knew of them. One of the crewmen's final words though, were rattling around in his head. "_Chandana said the ship was dead. We trusted him. He was right. But even a dead god can dream."_ That alone would seem to imply that Indoctrination wasn't a conscious process, it was a side effect of being near Reaper technology.

His fellow councilors though, dismissed the evidence as further proof of Shepard's mental instability. Anderson though, had a theory that scared him. If it was right, then the Reapers really had planned ahead for all eventualities, and the task of getting ready for their arrival was so much more difficult.

**Dolidze 25(1), unnamed system**

The Alliance, in the aftermath of the Battle of the Citadel, realized that they needed a ship that combined the best attributes of a dreadnought and a cruiser. They had invented a battlecruiser, but it had remained little more than a husk, floating in space while politicians debated over whether they should spend more credits on the project, which had shown little progress.

However, when human colonies started getting abducted, some of the higher up admirals grew worried, and secretly restarted the project. Now the first ship, the _XXV_ _Thunderchild_, was ready to initiate a test of its weapons. To do so, the Alliance had decided to use a system that was lifeless, due to the lack of resources in the system, which made it perfect for weapons testing. The _Thunderchild_ was to fly into the asteroid field, and target a small squadron of obsolete frigates, under the control of a VI. The observers were a group of senior Alliance officers, who were using the SSV Warsaw as a platform to observe from.

The _Thunderchild_ was armed with an experimental configuration. Instead of a cruiser's usual armament of one large cannon, supplemented by a battery of GARDIANs and torpedoes, the designers had added a series of high powered cannons, arranged so that they could provide broadside firepower. In addition to those cannons, the ship had a much more extensive GARDIAN array, along with a series of Javelin II missile tubes. After the fiasco at Watson colony, the Alliance had nearly gotten rid of the missiles, but had decided to give them one last chance. If they proved ineffective in this role, then they'd be scrapped and replaced with newer missiles.

The test started out perfectly, with the prototype zipping through the asteroids, blasting away incoming torpedoes with GARDIAN fire, and even letting a couple bounce off the kinetic barriers, which barely flickered. In fact, the ship managed to destroy 1 of the obsolete frigates, the frigate having been caught out of its hiding spot by a lucky salvo. However, the observers noticed that the cruiser wasn't quite as maneuverable as they had expected, and the ship was, ironically, vulnerable to attacks from behind.

One of the testing frigates fired a salvo of torpedoes at the _Thunderchild_ as it passed by, and managed to disable one of the two engines mounted in rear of the 750 meter long ship. It had managed to destroy the attacker, but it was now listing to port, and had its turning circle greatly increased. From there, the test went downhill fairly quickly. While it was able to destroy all the frigates, it had sustained fairly major damage, with primary life support being knocked out, kinetic barrier capacitors damaged so they could only charge up to 35% of their full capacity, the aforementioned left engine explosive failure, overheated GARDIAN defenses, 3 of the heavy guns knocked out, and the ship's Mass Effect core had been forced into a emergency shutdown. Fortunately, this had been a simulated battle, with only training munitions and loadouts being used.

The observers had noted all this, and had made their suggestions clear in their reports. The battlecruiser would have to be more maneuverable, and be better defended. In addition, captains should be made aware of the ship's vulnerability to attacks from the rear, and would have to avoid ambush scenarios. They praised the ship's firepower however, but they said that the Javelin IIs were too overpowered for ship to ship combat. However, they were still useful for attack ground targets, and as such, would be removed from the final product's weapons bays.

**Unknown system, unknown time/date**

It had been said that in space, no one can hear you scream. They were right. Out of nowhere, a ship appeared from a rip in space. It was a design that was unusually elegant for a space faring vessel. The purple coloring was even odder, but given that the races who had built the vessel weren't known for following reason, one could argue it was excused. That didn't change the fact that the ship was not where it was supposed to be. Onboard the ship, in a hanger bay filled with dead bodies, human and alien alike, near a dropship that was covered in scorches from plasma fire, a figure stood. He was about 7 feet tall, and wore armor with a unusual chestpiece, which had a massive cyclinder on it. The armor itself was olive green with a orange colored collar.

Jorge, S-052, it seemed, wasn't dead yet.

Actual place in the universe


	19. Chapter 19

A/N: See previous chapter.

This fic has an M Shep/Ash relationship, with a renegade Shepard. Live with it. It also has a ?/Chief relationship. Yes, that will finally be revealed, at least in the next chapter.

Chapter quote:

The reason the Air Force, Army, Navy and Marines bicker amongst themselves is that they don't speak the same language. For instance, take the simple phrase "secure the building".

The Army will post guards around the place.  
The Navy will turn out the lights and lock the doors.  
The Marines will kill everybody inside and set up a headquarters  
The Air Force will take out a 5 year lease with an option to buy.

Anonymous

End quote

Fanfic recommendation: Mass Effect: A new past, by Bombsquad. This fic is about an AU Mass Effect, where the Alliance has some very nice new tech, and they ran into some other races before the Turians. Underrated story that needs attention. Better than this summary does it credit for.

Respond to reviews:

There, it's been said. Happy?

Yes, I know it's a nice work I've done.

Would you want to salvage some unknown hull materials, and use them as makeshift hull plating, without knowing anything about them?

The supercarrier is open to vacuum, so they aren't a problem and the corvette's crew has been…dealt with by Jorge.

Yes, the Councilors are morons, and the twist was a nice change of pace for the status quo.

Yes, it could've been longer, but it was just an intermission, not a full length chapter.

End reviews response

Commander Shepard leaned against the wall, panting deeply through his helmet's built-in respirator. The last part had been a doozy, with Samara's biotic bubble protecting the team consisting of himself, Garrus, and Chief, they had managed to advance through the Collector forces rapidly, but they had cut it close. A few more seconds, and the biotic barrier would've fallen, and very likely he would lost Garrus or Chief to the swarms.

Once inside the chamber, Samara had collapsed to the ground, and was currently in the midst of consuming an energy drink found in every Alliance soldier's ration pack. The distraction team had managed to make it inside, but the Collectors were busy trying to cut through the doors that had been sealed right in their faces.

Although the doors had been covered by a series of Asteroidea AP mines, and 3 Lotus AT mines, currently configured to attack infantry targets. However, Shepard knew that those measures would only buy him time. He needed to stop standing around, and to go destroy the Collector base, preferably before the doors were breached and the decision was taken out of his hands. He stood up straight, and walked over to where the group was standing around, some chatting with each other, while others checked their armor and its kinetic barriers.

Shepard gestured to Garrus, Legion, and Chief; they fell in behind him, matching his pace. Shepard stepped up to where the Collector's version of an elevator was resting, the unusually shaped platform hovering slightly, dipping sharply to one side as Chief stepped aboard the platform, but it compensated rapidly. Shepard turned to face the crew he had assembled for this mission. The looks that they were giving him reminded him of the ones that he had been given at Torfan, before he had ordered so many of them to their deaths.

He cleared his throat, shaking off the bad memories and said" "Today, we fight against beings that have never known defeat. Teach them well. We have fought long and hard to reach this point today.Today we fight for all those who have been taken by the Collectors! It's been said that this would be a suicide mission. Let's prove them wrong."

The platform began rising up, and flew off, heading towards the massive construct that was in the station's center. All roads seemed to lead to this one spot on the Station, and hopefully they would reveal something worth destroying. Although Shepard had no idea what the Collectors were doing with the dissolved colonists, he had decided that it didn't matter, as he was going to destroy the base and everything in it. At least, he was going to destroy it once the _Spirit of Fire_ had been repaired enough to clear the safe zone created by the station's Mass Effect fields.

**Spirit of Fire**

Currently, the Fire's field repairs were coming along with hardly a problem. While the crew had been forced to salvage much of the ship's interior hull plating from some of the spaces open to vacuum, and the Fire now had been forced to seal off many damaged parts of the ship. Some of the crew wondered if the gallant old vessel would be sent to the shipbreaking yards at Earth, and the salvaged material used to make new ships, but others had their doubts.

The UNSC was desperate enough for any ships, they argued, so desperate that they couldn't afford to have any of what little ships they had left out of commission for any longer than necessary. One thing was certain however, the Fire was an old ship, and she was showing her age. At points inside the ship, the Titanium-A was showing signs of cracking, and in some places, the ship emitted groans, like the ship was crying out in agony. It didn't take long for the crew, and shortly thereafter the Captain to hear about it. (1)

Quickly, Captain Cutter reassigned Professor Anders to work on developing a solution to the problem. Unfortunately, it had only taken a few simple tests to reveal the extent of the damage to the _Fire_. Simply put, the ship was showing her age, and her joints and other major parts of the ship were starting to corrode, the attacks hadn't helped things much.

It was starting to look like just stripping it for parts and getting a new ship was a more economic option. However, that wasn't an option, so they had to reinforce the ship enough to survive until a proper solution could be found. In the mean time, Anders was busy cooking up a nanobot solution that should buy some more time, and repair some of the minor cracks.

However, Cutter wasn't taking chances. All the crew now walked around with respirator packs on, and rescue pelicans, equipped for EVA rescues were on standby. If something were to go wrong, and a part of the ship was opened to vacuum, the exposed crew would need rescue ASAP.

**SR-2 Normandy**

Miranda Lawson ran into her quarters, shoving her way past some of the crew who were gathered around the large container of brandy that Gardner had pulled out from somewhere. Once she had passed by the door, she reached out and slammed her fist down on the door button, sealing the door behind her. Once the door sealed, she walked over to one of the paintings on her wall, and removed it, tossing the expensive artwork onto her bed, and revealing the hidden safe behind the artwork.

She swiftly entered a 15 digit sequence on the keypad, and the door slid open. Inside nestled on a cloth, was a small chip, about 32 mm by 32 mm, the plastic casing being the standard Cerberus orange. With delicate care, and a small set of tweezers, she picked up the chip, and put it into the small carrying case, which had been made for that purpose. The chip, though smaller than an Omni-tool's chip, cost approximately 250,000 credits, and was built for one purpose. Miranda wasn't a fool, and despite being told by The Illusive Man that Shepard would not have a control chip implanted in him, she had already had a working model manufactured and ready to be used.

She had resisted the urged to smash it when she had heard that her suggestion was overridden, instead saving it in case he changed his mind. Now it was going to be used, but not on the person that it had been intended for. She pulled out a small cable, barely thinner than a hair, and inserted one end into a port on the chip, and the other into her omni-tool. She quickly ran a calibration, and then uploaded the loyalty program to the chip. She disconnected the wire, and after replacing the chip in the case, ran to Mordin's lab, as fast as possible.

Once the doors closed on Mordin's lab, she walked over to where Ashley Williams was lying on a medical bed, an IV running into her arm, pumping B+ blood into her body, along with some anesthetics and a saline solution. Mordin was already there, scrubbed, and ready for the chip. Miranda handed it to him, and said "Implant this near the Frontal Lobe. From there, it should do its job."

Mordin nodded, and grabbed the chip from Miranda's hand, and walked over to a table where a Craniotome sat waiting, for usage. He sighed, feeling some form of regret at doing this to the woman on his operating table. However, Shepard had pointed out that not only did Mordin owe him a favor for not mentioning Maelon's security breach to the STG; this was the only way for them to remain together. He deplored having to do this to her, but any form of long-distance relationship could lead to her being tried and executed for treason, and he wasn't about to go back into the distrusting arms of the Alliance, so that left this. He prayed for his soul, and began the operation.(2)

The SOF was built in 2473.

This whole part is one that I really, REALLY regret having to write. I just couldn't see any other alternative, with what I have planned, to keep Ash/Shep together. Not at least without using this.


	20. Chapter 20

A/N: If by now you think I own Halo or Mass Effect, you obviously are greatly mistaken, and should probably stop reading this. All rights are for 343 Industries and Bioware. The last ME2 DLC, Arrival's revelations will be mentioned, later on. Fic has a Renegade M!Shep/Ash relationship, and a future Chief/? relationship, that will be revealed after the Suicide Mission.

On a side note, Ash or Alenko will be a squadmate in ME3! Huzzah! Ash apparently, in one shot has let her hair down. I got to say, it figures that it would take a Reaper invasion, plus 2 sequels to make her finally do so.

On another, more important side note, WE GOT OSAMA! America: 1, al-Qaeda:0! OOHRAH!

Reviews Response:

Yes, I am aware that it comes from there, but seeing how I have no idea who actually wrote Murphy's Laws of Combat, it'll stay anonymous.

Ohh come on, what's a little brain surgery between friends?

Well, to be more precise, Six, Jorge, and the Marines dealt with whatever crew came their way, and seeing how they stopped sending troops after awhile, I have to guess that they killed the corvette's crew. Survivors on the carrier will be dealt with by the poor fools who scavenge the wrecks; at least, I hope they will be.

Damn, you managed to guess the ship! At least, one of your guesses was correct, but I won't say which.

My plan is to do up to LOTSB, then mark it as complete and wait for ME3 to come out for the sequel. It will be more AUish, probably with regards to ME3, so be advised about that.

End of reviews section

Chapter quote: Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for I am the baddest motherfucker in the whole damn valley.

Way too many Special Forces mottos for me to list here, unofficially

Fanfic recommendation: Mass Effect: The Reclaimers, by Left-Hand-Turn-Signal. It's a Halo/ME crossover, but it avoids some clichés that are prevalent with most Halo/ME crossovers, and has very good potential.

Story begins:

Shepard was a ruthless man, losing your family to a bunch of Batarian slavers at the ripe age of 16 tended to make one cold and hard. His service as a N7 black-bag operator whose sole job was to deal with threats to the Alliance before the media found out about them only made that trait even more pronounced but even he was disgusted by what he had discovered in the chamber. The Reapers apparently reproduced, for lack of a better term, by liquefying an entire species into…paste, and putting the paste into a giant mechanical body which would become a Reaper.

Seeing the massive creature, and being told that it was only a fetus, despite having tens, if not hundreds of thousands of humans processed into its body, was a sobering sight for Shepard to behold. He resolved, without debate to destroy the abomination, and Chief and Garrus agreed, without even a snarky joke from Garrus falling from his lips. Immediately, they opened fire on the tubes that were feeding the Reaper, shattering one before armored shutters dropped over the other three, and swarms of Collectors began arriving. Their wings made a chattering sound that reminded Shepard of a documentary in history class that was about locust swarms, and how they could strip huge tracts of land free of all vegetation inside of a few hours.

Being a farmer's son, he knew the sound well, having once had to help his father protect their crops against such a swarm. He remembered seeing the sky turn black, as thousands of locusts swarmed above him, his chemical sprayer feeling puny in his hands, ineffective against such a swarm. Fortunately, they had managed to harvest most of their crops the week before, so it wasn't as devastating as it could've been. They still had lost a decent portion of their crop, however.

Without even pausing to think, they shifted targets, Chief's weapons exacting a fearsome toll of the Collectors, but Garrus and Shepard weren't far behind, their greater experience dealing with Collectors showing, as they fired short bursts of fire into the incoming Collector swarms. A loud siren was heard and for some reason, the shutters retracted, exposing the tubes, and their soft orange glow. Shepard managed to snap off a quick shot with his Widow, shattering another tube, but the shutters began to retract back into position. Fortunately, Chief had been focusing his fire on another tube, and shattered that one as well.

Unfortunately, his focusing on the tube left him open, and Harbinger seized that opportunity, sending his usual biotic flare, followed up with an incineration blast. Chief's MJOLNIR armor's shields dropped precipitously and the bar began flashing red on Chief's HUD. Chef reacted with his usual speed, ducking his bulk behind the cover that an odd piece of Collector architecture provided from the hail of Collector rounds that was heading his way.

The Collectors pressed their advantage, sending a couple Drones around to try and flank Chief, but he was too quick for them, a short burst of fire ending the threat of one of them. The other was stripped of his weapon, and then slammed into the ground with all the force of a pile driver. To his surprise, the drone was still alive, reaching out with its hands to try and remove Chief's grip on the Collector's skull. Chief tightened his grip on the skull, and then, with one hand, spun the body hard, first to the left, and then to the right. The ominously loud cracking sound, followed by the body going limp, signaled that his intended result of a cervical fracture (Broken neck) had been achieved.

The distraction, however, allowed a Collector Assassin, armed with its signature beam weapon, to move into an enfilading position to cover Shepard and Garrus. From there, it opened fire, the glowing yellow beam striking the Commander's shields, and rapidly draining them. In response, Garrus began pumping rounds into the Assassin, but the transparent shield it generated in front of it, blocked much of the fire from reaching its intended target. It was almost gloating, as it moved into a better firing position and ceasing fire for a few seconds, cooling the weapon down so it could resume firing.

A metallic clinking emanated from between its feet, and it looked down to see a small green cylinder, the last sight it would see in its life. The M9 grenade detonated, the .19 kg of ComL explosive sending shrapnel flying up into the torso, ripping through the Collector's carapace like a chainsaw through butter. The tattered remains of the body collapsed to the ground, leaking yellowish blood from the openings that had been opened in its body by the shrapnel.

Once again, the sirens sounded, and the lone tube's shutter retracted into its housing, revealing the sole remaining tube, and its contents of human paste. A second later, the tough transparent material that the tube was made of was shattered by a high velocity impact, namely the slug from an M-98 Widow, spilling its contents on the ground. However the major effect was more obvious for Shepard and company. The Human-Reaper, bereft of its sole means of suspension, fell into the pit below it. Shepard walked over to the ledge, and looked down, but saw only darkness and shadow. Behind him, Garrus and Chief finished off the few remaining Collectors with a few burst of automatic fire.

He turned, and walked towards the reactor access panel, his objective. From there, he could set the reactor to overload, and destroy the entire station. However, he paused before the panel, thinking carefully about his decision. If he destroyed the station, then the Spirit of Fire and the Normandy would be sucked into the black hole, lost forever. The Reapers would come, and, bereft of the sole crew who knew the Reapers were real and could be beaten, the universe would resume its cycle of extinction, unstopped.

However, he wanted the colonists' deaths not to be in vain, like those of his family on Mindoir. He was not about to put another child in his place, not again! Freedom's Progress and Horizon had brought back nightmares, nightmares which he had buried after Torfan! Or at least, he had thought they were buried…

When the Reapers came, he knew that even with the UNSC's technology, it was unlikely that they could hold off a Reaper invasion without extremely high losses. MAC guns were too big, took up too much power, and generated far too much heat to risk mounting them on anything smaller than a dreadnought. They needed every advantage that they could get, and having a station that was built by the Reapers was an advantage in his book. Plus, it was proof that the Reapers existed, proof that Sovereign wasn't a "Geth Dreadnought", proof that the Council and Alliance couldn't just deny.

To stop the Reapers, they would have to unite every race's forces into one massive fleet, and even then, they might not stop the Reapers without being annihilated. To stop the Reapers, people would have to set aside their differences, and to do that, he needed something that would force them to work together. Convincing the Council races should be easy, but the Terminus systems would require a more effective solution to gain their allegiance. Having the advanced technology that this base could provide could provide that solution.

There was also the tactical aspect of it. A base, which was only accessible though a relay that needed an IFF to pass through the connecting Relay, and was surrounded by a junkyard of debris, which would thwart any large scale invasion, was perfect in his mind. However, he needed to figure out how to get the Reaper IFF reproduced, otherwise the Normandy would have to either remove and transfer over their IFF to whatever ship was going through the Omega-4, or it would be relegated to a commuter vessel, carrying passengers from point A to point B.

However, how would he save the base? He had seen no controls for the station's life support systems, and he wasn't good enough with tech to juryrig some way of clearing out the station without killing his crew as well. So far, his best option was having the Fire's Marines help clear it out, but he knew they lacked sufficient hardsuits and weapons to equip all the Marines.

At least, at the present time, they lacked sufficient hardsuits and munitions… if the Normandy could make a few trips back and forth through the Omega-4 Relay, they could zip over to Omega, grab the munitions and armor, and race back to the Station. From there, they could equip and dispatch kill teams out to the Station, operating like a Search and Destroy mission, in effect.

There was one major issue though, that was nagging in his head with that plan. Getting so many hardsuits and weapons, in such a short period of time, would send up major red flags, even on Omega. Said red flags would definitely alert the Alliance and Council that their wayward Spectre was up to something, and after Saren, he knew the Council was going to ask questions about why he needed over 1,000 hardsuits and weapons.

He contemplated saying that they were spares for his crew, which could work, but he suspected that they would try and put him on trial for treason, citing his buying up so much munitions as a sign he was planning to raise an army, like Saren had. Say what you wanted about the Council, they weren't going to let that happen to them twice in a row, and would probably take action against him. He wanted to unite the races, but not against him in a "Coalition of the Willing", which would defeat the purpose entirely.

He heard a beep in his ear, signifying an incoming signal, and he said "Open Channel D". Thane's voice came over the receiver built into his helmet, and he said "Shepard, we're holding them off, but we can't hold out forever." Shepard nodded, even though Thane couldn't see him, and replied" I'm already planning on the base, get ready to move back to the Normandy."

Joker cut in, saying "Heads up Commander, urgent transmission from the Illusive Man." Garrus activated his omni-tool, which projected a life-sized image of the Cerberus leader in front of Shepard's eyes. In his usual mysterious voice, he began with "Shepard, you've done the impossible. However, when the Reapers come, we need every advantage we can get. This base" he gestured with his hands, a fairly grandiose gesture in Shepard's opinion" could provide us an advantage. Working samples of Reaper technology could put us out on top of the Reapers, when they arrive! You and I both know that we need every advantage we can get when facing them."

Shepard paused, and considered the Illusive Man's words. While Cerberus had brought him back, and had taken action against the Collectors, he knew that they weren't saints, not by any standard. However, they didn't try and claim that they were saints, which put them a slight step up from so many of the others who had made such claims to Shepard. They also raised the point of needing every advantage to stop the Reapers, and that meant this base. However, the threat of Indoctrination was present on his mind, as he mentally debated over the base's fate.

Part of his mind wanted to destroy the base, and the thousands of colonists who had vanished wouldn't have died in vain. However, another part wanted to keep it, because, he knew that they would need every advantage possible. Ethics, he knew, in the face of a Reaper invasion, would be the first thing out the airlock. Besides the Council, and Udina, at least.

Besides, who's to say that if he gave the base to the Council, or even the Alliance, that Cerberus wouldn't benefit from the base, thanks to their informants, or that the Council or Alliance would be mature enough to use the base safely. Knowing the Council, they'd just deny it ever existed, or they'd claim it was a Geth station, built to manufacture bioweapons, or something similar.

The Alliance would trip over themselves sharing the base with the Council races, and the same thing would happen, with little difference. Cerberus was ruthless, brutal, and immoral on many levels, but, they were out to preserve humanity, like a human version of the STG or the League of One. However, their crimes paled in comparison to those of the STG, which was responsible for the genophage inflicted on the Krogan. (a)

He made his decision, and asked, "How would I exactly clear out the base?" There was a ghost of a smile on his face, beneath the helmet which blocked his features behind a layer of armor. An observer, however, could easily describe the smile as resembling the Illusive Man's trademark grin. One thing was clear though: the Collectors were going to pay for their crimes.

(a). It's always been annoying to hear how "Cerberus is the ultimate evuls!11", when the STG invented the bloody Genophage, and you don't hear THEM get called on that! Bioware wants me to believe that Cerberus was the only race to experiment with Rachni, or husks? I'm supposed to believe that only 1 "terrorist" organization is doing those experiments?


	21. Chapter 21

A/N: Still don't own Halo or Mass Effect, because if I did, then I wouldn't have to do all these scholarship applications. All rights still belong to aforementioned parties, excluding any OCs, or original concepts and ideas used in this fic. Contains a RENEGADE M!Shep/ Ash relationship, along with a Chief/? relationship, to be mentioned after the Suicide Mission.

Reviews Response area:

Well, being held in what one could argue as romantic position by someone whose face can't be seen, much like your own, and besides, like all depictions of Tali, she's into Shep. And it was part embarrassment that she's in a romantic gesture in a public place.

I added that because I got a LOT of flak about that issue, and was a little pissed at the time.

Thanks, it's nice knowing I'm not the only Cerberus supporter on this site.

Why? Because I actually write a Renegade Shepard, unlike most of the authors on this website? Because I warned you, in EVERY AN that it had a Renegade Shepard? Because I stated in the AN for Chapter 12 that I had made my decision? Because I didn't ship Tail/Shep?

Exactly the point, I was trying to make!

It's to have someone who actually sees the value of saving the base. Everyone on this site seems to be "destroy the base, F*** you Cerberus!" but they fail to realize that we NEED every advantage that we can get to deal with the Reapers.

MACs do take up enormous amounts of power, and they also generate heat, hence why a full powered MAC is going to be rarely found in this universe. That doesn't mean that they won't be present, they will, just not at full power.

End of response section

Chapter Quote: "history shows that those who consistently turn the other cheek have a bad tendency to be wiped out by those living by the sword." Anonymous

Fanfic recommendation: Mass Vexations, and it's sequel Mass Vexations 2, by Herr Wozzack. What can I say about these fics that hasn't already been said? It spawned off almost every IS in the Mass Effect Section, and is a example of how one should write. Highly, highly, highly recommend these fics. Also, Cerberus will get vindicated in MV 3.

_Two Hours Later_

Shepard walked into his cabin on the Normandy and collapsed onto the bed, without even removing his armor. The past two hours had been… tiring, to say the least. Between the battle on the station, the fight with the Reaper, and his adrenalin high finally wearing off. Add in the stress about whether or not Ash would survive the operation, and he was more exhausted then after Hell Week during N7 training.

Fortunately, the Spirit of Fire was currently transitioning through the Relay, with the Normandy flying just ahead of it. Based on the reports that Captain Cutter had given him, the Fire was experiencing what the first generation Alliance vessels had experienced when going through the Charon relay. The Relay's could be used even if the Mass Effect core was inoperative, but it was highly advised against, as the shaking could kill the crew, and even literally shake the ship apart in some instances.

However, the Fire had a few things going for it, which should compensate for whatever stresses that Relay travel could do to the ship. First, the Fire was well built, with the idea of surviving any attack by virtue of her armor, not shields, which decreased the odds of the ship simply breaking up in transit. Second, the crew was congregating in the innermost parts of the ship, shielded by the sheer bulk of the ship, and finally, the crew had placed all nonessential personnel in cryopods, which were modified to be automatically ejected if the ship were to suffer critical damage. Though the ship would be lost, most of the crew would be saved.

Unbidden, his mind began to wander back to the events of the previous hours.

_Flashback_

_ Out of nowhere, he heard a tremendous crash, and he looked up from his work at the reactor's core, to see the metallic skull visage of the Human-Reaper. Its three eyes glowing red, it opened its mouth, which, a more logical part of his mind noted while the rest was quietly panicking, was lined with small tentacle like appendages. From the open mouth, a torrent of red flames rushed out, forming a massive wave of fire. With a cry of "GET DOWN!" Shepard threw himself behind the sanctuary offered by a conveniently placed piece of Collector architecture. The flames roared overhead, scorching the back of his helmet, and causing temperature warnings to flash on his HUD, but he was alive._

_ He poked his head up from behind his cover, and noticed, with a feeling of relief, that Chief and Garrus had also made it to cover. However, Chief's vitals were elevated, but Shepard ignored that. For now, he was more concerned with killing the Reaper. He pulled out his ML-77 missile launcher, and engaged the targeting computer, and pulled the trigger twice. Two small rockets whipped out of the barrel, and began tracking the target that had been loaded into their small brains: The Reaper's eyes. They impacted, their deaths marked by two explosions, the glow almost impossible to distinguish from that of the eyes, and the Reaper's head reeling back, in pain. It screamed, sounding almost human, for an instant, and pulled up its right hand to shield its eyes. In doing so, it exposed an open port on the wrist, obviously where the paste had been added to the creature's body._

_ A thin red dot appeared in the maw, flickering slightly as it jolted partly around, tracking the moving arm, and then it fired. Like the wrath of God, a massive red beam shot into the port, and caused something to ignite. Flames rippled out of the port, covering the wrist with a miniature bracelet of fire. He had thought the Reaper couldn't scream any louder. He was wrong, as the creature's pain filled screams now were close to deafening him even though he was wearing a soundproofed helmet._

_ He turned around to see Chief, holding an odd device on his shoulder, the barrel glowing bright red as it cooled down from the massive blast it had doubtlessly emitted. Shepard gave Chief a brief nod of thanks, and turned back to the Reaper, his eyes narrowed in slits beneath his Death Mask's protective layers. _

_End flashback_

Shepard didn't remember much of the fight with the Reaper fetus. He suspected that he might've suffered a minor concussion from the debris falling on him, but it was hard to tell. The X-ray that Chakwas had done was clean, so he was forced to set aside that issue, and start thinking about the meeting he would soon be having with Councilor Anderson. First, he was going to have to get the Spirit of Fire and the Normandy to a Cerberus dock, where hopefully they could see about repairing the gallant ships. The Fire was going to need one hell of an overhaul and rebuild, while the Normandy's unexpected crash landing meant that the support structure of the ship was dangerously fragile.

As it was, the Normandy's supporting network of reinforced load bearing beams were cracked and damaged in multiple areas, necessitating an urgent stop in a dock. He could tell that just by looking at the model ship display, where his prized collection of model vessels had miraculously survived intact, some of the ships were literally bouncing up and down in their resting places. Fortunately, he had converted the fishtank, which had been left empty after his fish had kept dying on him, into a model display case for the duration. His mind again wandered back to the events of just a few hours ago…

_Flashback_

_The creature reared back, and exposed its eyes inadvertently for another salvo of missiles. Shepard was tired, covered in Collector and human blood, and starting to feel like he had reached the end of his limits. He kept fighting though, not letting up on the barrage of missiles, not giving the creature a chance to recover. He kept fighting. For the lost. For Alenko. For Pressly. For himself._

_Chief fired off another energy blast, ripping one of the eyes out of its socket, sending the optical unit tumbling down the bottomless abyss beneath their feet. In retribution, the creature's tail lashed out, smashing one of the platforms, and sending Garrus diving onto the center platform. However, Chief's blast had the unexpected side effect of exposing what looked to be the Reaper's brain. The brain, from the narrow view he could see, was a massive container of the paste use to make the abomination. The thick glass used in its creation was spider-webbed with cracks, and looked like one shot could shatter the whole thing. Shepard ceased his rocket barrage, and pulled out his Karpov IX, the only weapon he had been able to salvage from the Normandy's crash site, and the weapon that he had used to kill Saren on the Citadel. He aimed the pistol, and paused for a moment, letting the creature get a good view of what he had planned for it, and fired an explosive round._

_The projectile struck the tank, and detonated. That was the straw that broke the camel's back. The glass shattered, spilling paste all over the inside of the head, and the creature gave one last plaintive scream, that for a moment, sounded almost human, before falling, once again to its doom. Unfortunately for Shepard and his team, while on the way down the express elevator to hell, it grabbed the bottom of the platform that had begun to ferry Shepard's team back to a place where they could reach the Normandy, and grabbed on for dear life to the supporting structure. It held the grip for only a second, before the weight of the creature ripped the creature's grip from the platform, but the damage was done. It jerked hard to the right, and descended on a new course, one that ended abruptly with a terminal impact with the wall._

_Shepard regained consciousness slowly, feeling his head throb with pain. He looked around, and saw piles of debris scattered around the crash site, but no sign of his teammates. Beside him, he heard the clatter of metal being moved, and he looked at the source of the noise. To his right, a slab of metal was pushed to one side, and Garrus's helmet clad head appeared out of the debris pile. Shepard looked around, searching for Chief, but saw no sign of him. Then he saw the blood stains._

_The blood was red, eliminating the possibility that it was an unfortunate Collector, and Shepard spotted more stains, that were leading away from the site. Next to one pile of debris, which upon closer inspection, looked like it had been pushed aside, was a long piece of metal, a pole that measured, by his estimate, around 3 feet long. The first foot and a half or so was covered in human blood. Lying 2 feet away from the pole was an empty and crushed can of biofoam, with a bootprint stamped deep into the metal. Then suddenly, a thought that had been bouncing around in his head revealed itself, and he started to run._

_Following the bloodstains was easy, and Shepard's stride tore down the hall, Garrus following right behind him, until he came across Chief. Chief had slumped against the wall, and was holding (1) his side, which was leaking copious amounts of blood, welling up from between his fingers. Chief began to topple over, and Shepard and Garrus rushed over to his sides, grabbing his body, and holding him upright._

_Then, they began to move at a slow, but steady run down the passageway, but then, to their horror, they heard the sounds of Collector footsteps running down the hall behind them. They continued their run, refusing to look back, even when the first few shots whizzed past their heads. Shepard's HUD showed that he was barely 20 meters from the extraction point. However, it also showed the countdown until the Station's reactor core overloaded._

_1:55_

_1:54_

_1:53_

_Shepard cursed, and ran faster, hoping to make it to safety. They ran out of the narrow hallway in which they had been running, and looking back, Shepard could see Collectors, hundreds of them, swarming up out of the floor and ceiling, oddly enough, like a swarm of bees, seeking to protect their hive and it's queen._

_Shepard turned, and pulled out a small sphere that Chief had given him prior to the mission's start. Depressing the trigger, the sphere ignited with a glowing blue light, and Shepard whipped the grenade like it was a fastball right at the lead Collector. It stuck to the defiled Prothean's chest, and it frantically tried to pull it off, but it detonated barely a second later. Shepard and Garrus's visors polarized automatically, cutting out the worst of the flash. The blinding blue flash, was oddly enough, accompanied by the smell of burnt meat, and Shepard's visor depolarized in time for him to see that he had managed to kill potentially a couple dozen with that one toss. Unfortunately, that still left hundreds more swarming his way. Shepard reached down with one hand to grasp his Karpov IX pistol, and drew the weapon in one hand. For some odd reason, he noted that his hand was shaking slightly, but he put it off to the vibration of hundreds of bodies approaching his position._

_1:32_

_1:31_

_1:30_

_Then he heard it. A guttural roaring noise that could only be one ship. He turned around, and beheld the most beautiful sight he had ever seen in his entire life. The SR-2 Normandy, lifting up right behind his position, with the exterior airlock door sliding open, revealing, much to his surprise, Joker, who was wielding a M-8 Avenger. Joker's fire may not have been the most accurate, as Shepard wryly noted while running towards him, carrying Chief along with Garrus, but it was serving its purpose. The Collector swarm was blocked in at the hallway both by the sheer weight of bodies, and by Joker's killing of the few that managed to fight their way through the chokepoint._

_Garrus and Shepard stopped once they were within 15 feet of the Normandy's airlock, and in unison, they threw Chief's motionless body, aiming at the airlock floor. Joker's eyes nearly popped out of his head, but he managed to scramble out of the way of the incoming projectile. Garrus then followed up, landing with a roll, safely in the airlock's niche in the hull. However, a platform, which had formed part of the floor that had been used to get a running start for the jump, collapsed, widening the gap between solid ground and the Normandy by several feet._

_Shepard sighed, holstered his pistol, rolled his shoulders and ran. His armored bulk tore down the hallway, while in his head, he heard Harbinger's voice for some reason, saying some nonsense but Shepard ignored him. He leaped through the air, soaring like a brick, his hands reaching out, frantically trying to grasp the edge of the airlock. With a smash, Shepard's body slammed into the airlock's edge, driving the wind out of his body with an explosive gasp but he held on tight, refusing to let go. Garrus reached out, and tried to pull Shepard up onto the edge, but he was tired, and nearing the ends of his limits. Shepard felt certain that he would fall, then he felt it. Chief's hand reached down, and grabbed onto Shepard's armor tightly, and with a might yank, pulled his body up onto the edge, next to his own. _

_Shepard and Garrus reached down, and grabbed Chief, pulling him inside, and Joker followed suit, the airlock door sealing behind him with a hiss. However, once Shepard and Garrus entered the Normandy itself, they were greeted by a loud cry of "JOHN!" emanating from all the speakers on the cockpit, and on the holotank where EDI's avatar usually was, he saw Cortana's electronic figure drop to what was the ground in the holotank, in despair._

_Joker stumbled in after them, tossing the Avenger to one side, as he climbed back into his seat, retaking the controls. Shepard, meanwhile, had pulled out a small stretcher stored in the CIC's medical kit, and was busy uncollapsing it so that he could put Chief's armored bulk on something other than his and Garrus's shoulders. He finally managed to get the stretcher working, and after some cursing, he and Garrus managed to place Chief onto the stretcher. It creaked ominously, but they ignored the creak, and rushed the stretcher into the elevator, Shepard slamming a fist on the deck 3 button. The door closed, and the car began its descent onto the 3__rd__ deck of the Normandy._

_End flashback_

Shepard had escorted Chief to the Medical Bay, and from there, he had simply gone back up to his quarters, sealing the door behind him, and collapsing onto his bed, not even removing his armor. The mission had been successful, the Station was saved, the Collectors were dead, and he had rescued the Spirit of Fire, but at great cost. The Master Chief was wounded, the Normandy was badly damaged, Ash was hovering near death, and worst of all, he had lost a member of the crew. Samara had died holding the line, victim of an incineration blast from Harbinger, which had charbroiled her while her barrier was recharging.

Shepard felt some guilt about her death, but given she had said in no uncertain terms that after the Collectors were dealt with, she would be obligated to kill him, he felt little remorse. And to be fair, he had been planning on dealing with Morinth her way, but then his crew had been captured, forcing his hand. Besides, it wasn't like he had killed innocents; it was Omega, not the Presidium.

Now his plan was to head to a Cerberus shipyard, along with the Fire, get both ships repaired, and then head to the Citadel. While he wasn't a fan of the Council, they deserved to know at least that the Collectors were dealt with, and maybe this time, he could convince them about the Reaper threat. However, it was starting to look like he was going to have to rely on public opinion to force their decisions, rather than arguing with them fruitlessly. Emily Wong had requested a exclusive interview after all…

(1) look, I know that I will catch hell for this, but remember, Chief's been through hell and back. Even a Spartan has his limits, and well, he's reached them.


End file.
